Catharsis
by MyWords-MySolace
Summary: HPDMHP "As it has always been, he's perfect on the outside while inside he's suffering." Draco Malfoy, with the help of the Order, has protection from the Death Eaters he escaped. But it's going to take a certain Gryffindor to save him from himself.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, all.

Well, I started working on this a few weeks ago, thinking it would be a one shot. I've had the idea for a while about a story with a much darker take on Draco's childhood, and started this work just to get the scene to stop pounding at my skull, screaming to be let out.

Now, a few weeks later, it's grown out of control and has become something that's definitely turning out to me a multi-chaptered story with a lot more depth than I was planning. I've got at least the first four to five chapters already written, and the ideas just keep coming. I debated posting it before all the chapters are finished (I tend to be a bit bad when it comes to finishing stories), but I was very happy with the response I got to my Halloween fiction, and I can't resist the urge to start posting this one.

So, away we go. On with the show.

I don't own Harry Potter and am making no money from the writing of sharing of this work of fiction. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Brothers.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK.**

Number twelve Grimmauld Place reminds Draco entirely too much of the disused basement rooms of the manor. Sometimes, when he wakes screaming from nightmares, he's convinced, for a moment, that the last few weeks have been a hallucination and he's locked in the manor again, unable to live and unable to die. Afterward, he's never able to get back to sleep, the dark corners and musty smell of the house locking his mind firmly on the memories of locked doors and screamed pleas and the dog-shit taste of nutrient potions.

Tonight is no different. He awakes screaming, rambling nonsense - some strange mixture of obscenities and his mother's name and _please someone help me_. His eyes dart wildly around the room and he screams louder, finger's grasping at blonde hair, words melting into random syllables that he can no longer understand. He's back there, back in his childhood home, and these four walls are laughing at him again and any moment, through the door, he knows he'll hear the disgusted, calm, even _voice_ say "You are worthless".

He begins to sob through his screams. He brings his knees up to his chest and lays his forehead against them and sobs into his own curled up body. He wails his despair into the space between his chest and his thighs and thinks to himself 'I am worthless'.

_The voice_ doesn't come. His screams lose power as his voice loses strength. The walls stop laughing. His tears slow and he realizes that the room is very still and very quiet, and he remembers that this isn't Malfoy Manor. He remembers that this is number twelve Grimmauld Place and this is his room and Dumbledore has sworn to him that he is safe here from _the voice_.

He feels stupid. He swipes his arms angrily across his cheeks to rid himself of his tears. He feels weak. He grabs his wand from the bedside table and double checks the silencing charms he put on the room before he went to bed. They're still there, still secure. He listens hard for a moment, but doesn't hear frantic footsteps coming his way. He breathes a sigh of relief. For another night, no one has heard his weakness.

His relief, however, is short-lived, because even if no one else knows, _Draco _knows, and it pisses him off. He _knows_ this isn't the manor, _knows_ that the only locks here are the ones on the doors and windows to keep away the danger. But he _forgets_. His nightmares act like an _obliviate_ and when he wakes, the memories so fresh he can very nearly feel his stomach grumbling, he forgets everything else except _the voice_ and he knows this is stupid. He is old enough, he thinks, to be able to control his own mind, night terrors or not. He has survived worse things than nightmares.

He's so angry with himself that he can barely breathe. He wants to destroy something. He wants to humiliate something as much as he's been humiliated. He wants to make something scar. He's a second away from sending a reducto at his wardrobe or splintering the wood of his bed. He wants to rage through the room until there's nothing beautiful left in it, and then fling open his door destroy every wonderful thing in this house, in this country, in the entire world. He's so angry that the plaster behind his head begins to crack with the magic that's swirling, unbidden, around him.

This serves to make him even angrier. _Only children can't control their own bleeding magic,_ he thinks to himself, but the thought only makes him want to lash out more. He can feel his hold on his magic slipping. His mattress begins to vibrate.

He shuts his eyes tight. "You're a Malfoy," he says to himself, but to his own ears it's _the voice_, "You will control yourself." He takes three deep breaths and counts backwards from ten and by the time he reaches zero the plaster has stopped cracking and his mattress lies still and he can think straight again (barely).

But the inky, black mass of anger is still squirming in his chest. It's a monster, clawing to get out. He still wants to destroy something. Something that is to be marveled at. Something beautiful. _"My beautiful, beautiful Draco,"_ his mother's voice whispers gently in his ear, a memory from when he was younger and she repeated the words to him everyday before bed, _"My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."_

He almost laughs.

Almost.

He is beautiful. He knows this. He wishes he didn't, because then his urge to mar something wouldn't be satisfied by what he is about to do. He is a beautiful monster, and sooner or later the monster always gets what's coming to him.

He raises his wand again and murmurs "Secare." Nothing appears to happen, but he's unfazed. He settles himself into a cross legged position, slides his left sleeve upward, over his elbow, and casts a soft lumos to inspect his arm.

It's a spiderweb of raised pink lines atop sunken white. He switches his wand to his left hand to lift his right sleeve. The right arm is no better. He studies both intently, grey eyes looking languidly over the rough terrain. The scars are random, but they spell out, for him, an entire lifetime. Written here is the story of how god or fate or karma or _whoever_ forgot to love Draco Malfoy.

He considers, for a moment longer, before seeming to make up his mind. He slides his right sleeve back down and holds his wand with his right hand. Gently, he guides the tip to a spot just beneath his elbow and pushes gently. Holding his breath, he slides his wand horizontally and hisses. Nothing seems to happen for a moment, and then a red line appears and he begins to bleed, his Secare charm (a convenient spell of his own invention) having turned the tip of his wand razor sharp.

It isn't too deep - they never are - but it's enough for a thin line of scarlet to run down the side of his arm and drip two tiny drops onto the bedspread. He watches as he bleeds, and feels the blackness in his chest begin to ebb away with the crimson. He raises his wand again, hovers for a moment, and then he moves swiftly and he's bleeding from two lines and his breathing is coming faster and he feels grounded.

He feels alive. He knows where he is as long as he knows where he bleeds. He knows who he is as long as he knows who's flesh he's cutting. He's floating in a place where _the voice_ can't reach him and there are no cobwebs and no laughing walls and he's warm and safe and loved. He's hanging suspended where no one can tell him "You are worthless and you are a disgrace and there is no one left to love you and it's all your fault".

He's destroying his perfect, pale Malfoy body one cut at a time, and it satisfies him more than destroying anything else ever could.

He brings his wand down again when the first two wounds clot, and again when the third does the same. Time stands still for him as he finally feels in (and, somehow, simultaneously out of) control of his whole life. By the time the blackness is gone and he's finally bled the monster dry, there are seven angry red cuts staring up at him.

He feels very still and very calm.

Methodically, without thinking, he whispers "Finite Incantatem" and his wand returns to normal. He cleans the bedpread with a quick "Scourgify" and then does the same for his arm, wincing only slightly at the rough sensation of the spell against his wounds. He lies back and mutters "Nox," and is left to stare into the sudden darkness. He knows he won't sleep tonight. But at least his mind is clearer. He's numb. The entire world is pushing against him, but he's curled up insde himself where nothing can find him. The residual, slow, pulsing pain in his arm will keep him there, at least for a little while.

Everything goes silent and Draco stares upward, eyes unseeing, waiting for the dawn.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

He looks like hell and he knows it.

There are dark circles under his eyes, a stark contrast to the pale, almost sickly tone of his skin. His hair hangs limply around his too-thin face. His cheeks are starting to hollow and his grey eyes stare back at him, hard and flat and cold. The wonderful numbness from the night before is gone. His arm has crusted over with ugly brown scabs and once again he's not okay.

But he's always been a good actor. He prides himself on it. It's the one useful thing being a Malfoy has taught him. He straightens his back, spells his hair into its usual perfect sheen, and paints an expression on his face that screams haughty indifference. He looks like the portraits in the front hallway of the Manor - paintings hundreds of years old tracing the Malfoy bloodline, each man standing exactly the same way, staring out with dead eyes. He looks exactly the way a Malfoy should look and it makes him slightly nauseous but he's been doing it for so long that he barely even notices anymore.

He walks with a long, confident stride. It's not a strut, per se, but it's very bourgeois. He locks his bedroom door behind him with a whispered spell thrown over his shoulder and pockets his wand. He tries his best not to be seen with his wand in the house. They allow him to keep it, but he gets the feeling they feel more threatened by him when they see it in his hands. He knows enough simple wandless magic to get by when he has to summon something or light a candle in one of the other residents' presence.

Weasley always says he's showing off. Draco never bothers to argue with him.

The stairs creak under his weight and he passes Kreacher on his way down, who glares daggers at him and mutters something about "blood-traitor scum" under his breath. The elf hadn't been fond of him ever since Draco told him, in no uncertain terms, that he didn't agree with pureblood ideals and Kreacher was not welcome to confide in him any sort of disgust at the "dirty, filthy, muggle-loving scum" in his mistress' house. The elf had assumed he shared the same ideals as everyone else who had his last name. He'd hated him with a passion ever since he found out otherwise.

The windows are open in the kitchen, letting in the crisp, morning breeze. It'll be muggy by afternoon, the whole of London boiling in the recent overly humid July heat, but at the moment the breeze is cool and it feels lovely against Draco's face.

He strides into the room. There are six people at the table. The mood suddenly becomes very awkward and it's the type of awkwardness that's only possible when everyone stops in the middle of a great conversation because someone they definitely don't like has just walked in. Draco pretends it doesn't hurt and heads straight for the counter where the kettle sits, charmed to stay full and hot. He pours himself a cuppa, leaning against the counter, letting that delicious breeze lift his hair just slightly off his forehead.

"Good morning," he drawls as he replaces the kettle and takes a long sip from his mug.

There are a few scattered "Moring, Malfoy"s, but most of the people just nod to him and go back to their breakfasts. The twins are there, he notices, and they're two of the three people to say anything to him. They don't seem to mind him as much as the others, and Draco doesn't know why. Most likely they're too busy with their joke shop and their family and each other to bother hating him as fervently as everyone else. Granger is the only other to vocalize a greeting and she even offers a little smile (which Draco, out of habit, doesn't return). Draco doesn't know why she bothers. She suspects something, he thinks. She's itching to find out what can possibly put bags under a Malfoy's eyes besides a plot to bring death and destruction.

Weasley nods and continues stuffing bacon and sausages and eggs down his throat. He doesn't look up. Weasley hardly ever makes eye-contact with Draco unless he fancies a row. The Weaselette looks at him briefly and then goes back to her copy of the Daily Prophet and her slice of toast. Draco knows she still hasn't forgiven his family for what happened in second year (and somewhere deep inside, he doesn't blame her).

Potter just looks at him, green eyes all fire and brimstone, and nods once. Then he seems to decide to ignore Draco all together and tucks in to his pancakes.

Draco doesn't expect anything more. He drains his cup of tea standing at the sink, looking out into the garden, and then grabs an apple from the bowl on the counter. He wandlessly spells his cup clean with a muttered "Scourgify", ignoring the scoff this garners from Weasley, and then leaves without saying a word and without looking back. Even so, he can hear Weasley's voice faintly from the kitchen:

"Bloody git."

He considers going back up to his room, but the thought of spending any more time alone inside those four walls makes him shudder, so he heads, instead, to the sitting room. It's one of the only rooms in the house that doesn't remind him of home, mostly because the Order has managed to lift the heavy spells and change the room's decor. It's a light cream with a bright white marble fireplace and large, comfortable chocolate coloured furniture. It looks out onto the street through sheer curtains that ruffle in the breeze. It's been spelled larger and houses several bookshelves and lamps and end tables with vases of flowers.

It's what Draco always imagined a real home would look like, and he finds that when he's there, he isn't as inclined to remember _the voice._

He chooses a book at random off the shelves and settles into a plush chair by the window. He eats his apple as he reads, slowly and decadently, savouring each sweet morsel. Even now, weeks later, he doesn't eat much, but he enjoys every mouthful. He lets flavours linger on his tongue as long as he can and he knows it's just a by-product of months without food but he can't stop himself. After escaping the basement of the manor, everything Draco ever eats is the most delicious thing he's ever tasted.

He takes his time, vanishing the core when he's finished. Draco realizes, after the first page or two, that he's read this book before, but he shrugs it off and continues to read anyway. It's not a happy story, but it's the right type, just cmplex enough to keep his focus without tiring him out. These days, Draco finds that he can't read anything too heavy or his mind, slowed by insomnia and stress, slurs the words together and five pages in he gets completely lost and frustrated.

There are footsteps, but he doesn't bother to look up. Most of the Order is gone today, doing whatever top secret things the Order does when they disappear, so it can only be a handful of people, and Draco doubts any of said people would be looking for him. The footsteps shuffle in (he realizes that there's definitely more than one set of them) and then there's the tell-tale _poof_ of several people collapsing onto one of the couches.

It's quiet, for a moment, and one of them clears their throat.

"Plath?"

It takes Draco a moment to realize they're talking to him. He marks his spot with one long finger and then looks up. The golden trio is looking back at him and it's Granger who has the curious look on her face, so he assumes it was her who asked.

"Yes."

"I didn't know you read muggle literature."

Draco rolls his eyes. "They could write a book with all the things you don't know about me, Granger."

It's all automatic. Draco doesn't even have to think about it anymore. He oozes cool indifference and cutting remarks. It flies from his mouth without thought, his last name doing most of the work and years of practice living his lie for him. He could be nice, he knows, if he tried very hard. If he concentrated on the fact that he didn't hate these people. These people had saved his life and he was on their side and he didn't _want_ to be so cruel, really. If he just digs deep down and says the things his Malfoy instincts tell him not to say (things like "How are you?" and "Thank you" and "Fancy a cuppa and a chat?") and finds the Draco no one has ever seen but that he knows, somehow, exists, he could be rather pleasant to be around, he thinks.

But he isn't nice. He isn't because he knows it wouldn't change a goddamn thing.

He's stopped saying mudblood, blood-traitor, and anything else remotely pureblood. But that's the extent. He doesn't make any attempt at befriending anyone. He makes sure that every time he speaks they can think only of the Malfoy they've hated all along, because even if he tried to be nice they wouldn't see it. He has been so successful over the last seven years at being seen as a name rather than a person that he could do a complete one eighty and be more jolly than Chris fucking Kringle and they'd see it as some sort of trick. A trap. _Something. _ A Malfoy is always up to _something._ It would always be him against everyone else, and Draco sees no need to kill himself trying to change the inevitable.

Besides, he doesn't want anyone near him. The monster that lives inside him...the things he's seen and done...the things that have been done to him...

Draco knows he's better off alone, because if anyone saw how ugly he was inside, they'd turn him out into the street like the dirty ferret he was.

So he calls no one by their given name, to make them easier to pretend to loathe, and he does simply what he's been doing all his life: he fakes everything and does it magnificently.

"Bloody hell, Malfoy, she was just asking you a simple question."

"I'm sorry, was my answer too complicated to understand? Would you like me to rephrase it with smaller words?"

Weasley begins to turn red.

"You're a stupid bloody ponce, Malfoy."

Malfoy raises one fine eyebrow with practiced ease. "Careful, Weasley, or you'll burst a blood vessel. And then we won't be able to tell where your hair ends and your face begins."

Weasley stands and manages to take two steps toward Draco before Potter catches his arm.

"He's not worth it, Ron."

_"You are worthless."_

Draco only flinches the tiniest bit, a faint crack in his aristocratic mask. Potter and Weasley don't seem to notice and Granger is giving him the same curious look she's been giving him the entire time.

"Come on, Harry. He deserves it. He started it."

_"It's all your fault, Draco."_

Draco snaps the book closed, uses the sharp noise to keep himself here, in the room, in this reality. He purposely clamps a bit of skin on his right index finger in the pages and squeezes tight. The pain helps to keep his out of the basement, keep his mind firmly outside of the laughing walls.

"You know, Weasley, if you just fucked Granger already instead of jumping to protect her delicate, feminine sensibilities, maybe you'd be less uptight."

Weasley almost succeeds in pulling out of Potter's grasp, only held there because the golden boy's reflexes are so sharp. His right hand twitches and Draco knows he's itching to grab his wand. His face is nearly purple with rage, his breathing ragged through flared nostrils. Draco knows the situation doesn't warrant this amount of anger, but something about him pushes all Weasley's buttons and in a way Draco thinks he likes the lanky boy more than anyone because he's the easiest to keep at arm's length.

It's a long few moments before Ron puts his hands up in front of him and closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths.

"You know what, Malfoy? No one cares what you think. I don't know what Dumbledore was thinking when he agreed to protect you, as if you mattered to anyone. You could disappear tomorrow and no one would even notice."

_"There is no one left to love you. You are going to die alone and I'm going to hang you up for all to see and no one is going to care. No one will cry, no one will mourn you. You will die alone, pathetic, and unloved."_

_The voice_ is whispering in his ear and for a split second he wonders why no one is asking where it's coming from before he remembers that it's only him who gets the pleasure of _the voice_'s company. He's losing himself again, and it's happening fast.

He's never been this affected by Weasley. He's managed to not lose his composure in front of anyone for the last six weeks. _The voice_ has never been this insistent, never been so jubilant at the taunts of a red-haired youth.

Draco's hands are beginning to shake. He can't feel his finger pressed in the book anymore. He's slipping back into the thick darkness, the musky smell, the feel of his stomach aching for food. He tries to think of a retort but he can't focus enough. He's too far into the basement, _the voice_ is too loud in his ears. He drops the book with a clatter on the hardwood floor and turns on his heel and can only hope that it looks like a dramatic, suitably haughty exit.

He takes the stairs two at a time and hastily unlocks his door with a shakey hand, using the key he keeps stashed in his poscket because he doesn't trust himself to perform any kind of magic properly. He tumbles into his room and locks the door behind him. Collapsing onto his knees on the floor, he slaps one hand over his mouth to keep in the scream that's lying bitter and heavy on his tongue because he can't even cast an unlocking spell, let alone a silencing charm. He's breathing hard, so hard he feels light headed, and he makes a horrible keening groan behind his hand.

_"Worthless, alone, unloved."_

"I know," he whispers as he falls to the side onto his rump, beginning to rock back and forth, back and forth, anything to keep reminding him where he was.

_"Unworthy, useless, filthy."_

"I know, I know, I know," he pleads softly, fingers running over and over through his hair, grasping at the fine, blonde strands. His voice is strangled with the strain of keeping in the scream that's tearing at his throat to get out. "I know, I know, please stop it."

_"Pathetic, cowardly, sniveling creature."_

He can feel his magic begin to slip out of his control. A cologne bottle on his dresser shakes and dances over the edge, smashing on the floor. A picture on the wall behind him jumps off its hook and goes flying to the opposite end of the room. His bed is beginning to wobble back and forth, pushed by some invisible force.

He tries to breathe more depply and slowly before he passes out, tries to count backwards from ten to get a hold of his rampant magic, but it doesn't work. His wardrobe falls abruptly onto its side and clothes spill out onto the floor. _The voice_ is too loud. He can't get his concentration back. "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone..."

_"Who am I?"_

Tears begin to slip down Draco's cheeks. "I won't play this game again. I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't."

_"Who am I?"_

"Don't make me, don't make me!"

_"Who am I?"_

The door is rattling in its hinges. Draco realizes he's in serious danger of alerting the people downstairs, if he hasn't already. He's trembling horribly, his nails digging painfully into his scalp, and he chokes out, "You're my father."

_Lucius _laughs, low and smooth. _"Worthless, pathetic cretin, you are no son of mine."_

Draco wails, unable to stifle it any longer, and falls forward onto his hands and knees. He pulls his hand back to expose his wrist and brings it with as much force as he can muster down onto the floor. The pain is dull but startling, and he does it again and again and again. It hurts worse every time and he welcomes it, focusing his mind on the _thump thump thump_-ing ache that's building.

_Thump._

He remembers where he is.

_Thump._

He remembers that Lucius is far, far away from him.

_Thump._

The door stops rattling and his bed lies still and the picture stops whirring through the room and his clothes stop slithernig across the ground.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

He stops sobbing. He breathes more slowly. He falls quiet.

He raises his arm again, but stops mid swing.

_Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud._

Someone is knocking on his door.

He scrambles to his feet. His wrist whines in protest, an angry red bruise blossoming on the pale flesh. He tugs his sleeve down over his hand and does his best to flatten his hair.

The door is still _thud, thud, thud_-ing and a muffled voice is yelling, "Malfoy! Malfoy what the hell is going on in there? Malfoy, open the door, or I'll unlock it myself."

Draco clears his throat and hastily swipes a hand across his cheeks. "Go away!" he calls, kicking clothes in the direction of his overturned wardrobe, "I'm busy!"

The knocking stops. "Bullshit, Malfoy. I don't know what the fuck you're doing in there, but you 'd better open this door right now."

He tries to figure out who it is. The voice is definitely male and definitely older than any of the teenage occupants of the house. He wishes he'd asked this morning who from the Order had stayed behind to guard the house.

"Go away!" he tries again, sweeping the broken glass of his picture into a little pile as best he can with his hands.

"Malfoy, I have no choice. _Alohamora."_

"No, don't - !"

Draco flings himself at the door, but he's a second too late and Black has already pushed his way in.

It's hard for Draco to remember, sometimes, that Black is related to him. He's so completely different from every pureblood in the Black-Malfoy line that often it seems impossible for him to have a single drop of Black blood in him. The way he stands now, mouth agape and hair loose and falling messily about his shoulders, Draco wonders if maybe Black is lying and he's really more closely related to the Potters.

"Malfoy, what the hell happened in here?"

Draco instinctively straightens his back. "Bit of an accident with a spell, if you must know."

Black narrows his eyes. "What kind of spell?"

Draco only hesitates for a split second. "A cleaning spell. I was trying to tidy up."

He can tell by the look Black gives him that he doesn't believe a word of it. "I heard you yell. It sounded like you were crying."

Draco hopes the mightier-than-thou look he paints on his face is at least half as convincing as it usually is. He tilts his head back and looks down his nose for good measure. "Yes, well, the spell, Black. It rebounded and apparently had a few unfortunate side effects."

The man's eyes harden. "You're lying. You couldn't louse up a cleaning spell that badly. You're a Malfoy. You must've known every spell for cleaning, primping and grooming since you were ten years old."

Draco narrows his eyes and performs with perfect detail the patented Malfoy glare. "I'm glad to hear you have so much faith in me. But if you think I'm lying, why don't you prove it?"

He knows the instant he says it that Potter has told him of what his father said in second year, and the uncanny impression seems to make Black think that a dirty-enough look will make Draco's hair burst into flames.

Black stares at him a moment longer, as if looking hard enough will let him see through Draco's lie, and then lets out a frustrated breath. "Clean up this mess, Malfoy, and don't think Dumbledore _and _your godfather won't hear about this." He turns on his heel and walks away. Draco listens to his footfalls all the way down the stairs and then hears Weasley exclaim, distantly, _Well? What was he doing?_

He slams his door shut before he can hear the answer. His wrist is throbbing. His head hurts. He feels like he's run a marathon. He tiredly retrieves his wand from his pocket and begins to levitate his things back into position and repair the damage he's done. By the time he finishes, he has only enough energy left to crawl into bed and fall instantly to sleep.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I apologize for having to use those terrible line breaks. Stupid website tends to mess with anything else I try to use.

Please forgive/point out to me any mistakes there may be. I've been forced to type this at my office, which doesn't have Microsoft Word, and WordPad has no spellcheck or autocorrect. I have very good spelling...but when I type fast I tend to make stupid mistakes. I've read through it and tried to catch everything, but if I missed one or two, I'm very sorry.

Let me know what you think! Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Cheers.


	2. Chapter 2

I debated posting another chapter so soon, but I find myself chomping at the bit on this one. This is another highly Draco-centric chapter, and I'm really wanting to surge forward and get Harry into the picture, so I decided I'd go ahead and put this up to move things along more quickly.

Again, this was completely typed in WordPad and proof-read by me while sleep-deprived and surviving on coffee, so excuse any glaring mistakes.

Enjoy.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

He wakes up with hands on his shoulders, shaking him. Someone is yelling and someone else is saying, "Draco, Draco, Draco," over and over again. He wishes the person would stop yelling. He has a headache and it hurts his ears. The shaking doesn't help either.

He opens his eyes groggily and there are a pair of black ones staring back at him, glinting above a large, greasy nose and framed by lank, shapeless black hair, inches from his face. He gasps and the yelling stops and he realizes it was him all along and Severus is still shaking him and saying "Draco, Draco, Draco..."

"For the love of Merlin, would you stop that?" he snaps, though it comes out a little less menacing thatn he would have liked. His voice is still thick with sleep.

The hands leave his shoulders and Severus shuts up and Draco presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to rid himself of the headache pounding away at his skull. He feels too hot and sticky. His clothes are crumpled and stuck to him with sweat and he wishes he'd have put on pajamas. He has a terrible taste in his mouth and he has the sudden urge to brush his teeth clean of their nap-induced fuzz.

"Draco, what's going on?"

Well, his godfather never has been one to beat around the bush. Usually Draco likes that about him. But right now he feels dirty and tired and he doesn't want to talk about it. The light coming in the window is a dull, grey-ish yellow, which means it's either late afternoon or early morning. He doesn't know how long he's slept, but he doesn't put it past himself to sleep an entire day away. "What time is it?" he asks, words still slightly slurred.

"Nearly six. Now stop avoiding the question."

"AM or PM?"

Severus crosses his arms. "PM. Answer me, Draco."

Draco sighs. "Nothing's going on, Severus. I messed up a spell this morning, that mangy dog decided to make a big deal out of it, and I took a nap."

The black eyes don't waver. "You were tossing and turning, Draco. You were screaming in your sleep."

A tick works in Draco's jaw. "I had a nightmare, then, obviously. Is that any reason to call in the cavalry?"

Severus crosses his arms over his chest. "You may be able to play this game with Black, Draco, but not with me. Something is going on and you _will_ tell me what it is or I'll find out myself."

They stare at each other, neither willing to back down. "There's nothing going on, Severus, and even if there were, how would you find out? Use Legilimens on me? Because you and I both know that my Occlumency is good enough to stop the Dark Lord himself."

The eyes staring at him soften, and the look is odd. It somehow feels innately _wrong_ to see Severus Snape looking worried. "You look terrible, Draco, and the others mightn't be able to see it, but I do. You've got bags under your eyes. You look thin. You're barely eating. You put up a strong front, but you can't fool me, Draco Malfoy. I know you too well."

Draco doesn't know what to say to that. Trust the potions master to notice everything.

His left arms itches a bit and he resists the urge to scratch at his scabs.

Well, not _everything_, he supposes.

"I haven't seen you look like this since sixth year."

That sends a cold dagger shooting into Draco's stomach. He doesn't like to think about sixth year. He doesn't like to remember what he did - what he _had_ to do. He doesn't like to remember how close he came to bringing Dumbledore to his end. Sometimes, in his dreams, he does it, and the horrible green light hits the old man right in the heart and he flies backwards over the battlements and falls and Draco wakes with the crunch of bone on stone still ringing in his ears.

Had the Order not gotten there in time - not burst in wands blazing and severely outnumbering the small party of Death Eaters, forcing the young Malfoy and everyone accompanying him to make a quick exit - Draco would have been forced to do it. He would have had to channel the inner monster - would have had to remember _Lucius_ saying "_You're a Malfoy. You need to understand the political power of death."_ - and do the one thing he had always promised himself he'd never do.

Draco has promised himself that he will never lose himself so completely to his name that he takes a life.

"I'm just tired, Severus. We're in the middle of a war. It's bound to take a little out of me." The lie comes easily. His father would be proud.

He can tell Severus doesn't believe him. His godfather just looks at him, as if hoping the silence will make Draco so uncomfortable that he'll come clean. When it doesn't work and the teen stays stone-faced, Severus exhales heavily through his nose and rises from the bed. "Dumbledore would like a word with you," he says, and all traces of his earlier sympathy are gone. He sounds every bit the cold potions professor Draco has known for years, "He'll be here this evening. I doubt you'll be able to lie to him." Then he's just a flurry of black robes as he sweeps out the door and Draco would laugh at the unnecessary drama of that exit if the thought of speaking with Dumbledore wasn't making his stomach turn.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

The house is bustling with activity as Draco descends the stairs for the second time that day. He's showered and brushed his teeth and spelled his hair to perfection and he looks for all the world like a perfect, prim, proper Malfoy. He feels a tad better, having washed the grime from his skin, but his stomach is still in knots.

For being a gentle, genial old man, Dumbledore scares the hell out of him.

Draco can never shake the feeling, in the headmaster's presence, that the old man knows. Just what he knows, Draco is unsure of, but Dumbledore just _knows_ something - everything perhaps - about Draco and it unnerves the blonde teen to no end.

Molly Weasley is tottering about the kitchen, seeing over the multitude of pots and pans steaming and bubbling away. The Weaselette is lending a hand, as is the female Auror - Tongs, was it? Or Taunts? Draco never speaks to her, and throughout his childhood the name of his "blood-traitor aunt and filthy half-blood cousin" had always been taboo, so he always has trouble remembering her name (although her first name - _Nymphadora - _for some reason, he can remember that perfectly).

A few Order members are gathered at the table, heads bowed together, apparently having a very interesting and very heated conversation. Moody's low, growling voice seems to be predominant, but Black and the werewolf are holding their own. Arthur Weasley seems content to watch from the sidelines and Severus' lips are pressed into a hard, white line. Draco wonders, absently, what someone has said to piss him off that much.

He bypasses the kitchen and heads once again for the sitting room. The rest of the Weasleys are there, along with Granger and Potter and Fleur Delacoeur. They've broken themselves into little groupings, chatting and laughing. A firework goes whizzing by Draco's head from the direction of the twins and Mrs. Weasley's shrill "_Boys!_" very nearly makes him deaf in his right ear,

He catches himself before he smiles.

He's just wondering where his book from this morning has gone so he can take his mind off Dumbledore when Weasley calls out, "Oi, Malfoy!"

Draco clenches his jaw. "Yes?"

"What were you playing at this morning? Throw a temper tantrum, did you?"

This earns a chuckle from the twins, but the others are quiet. _So, everyone knows then,_ he thinks to himself as he slides his hands into his pockets so no one will see them clenching. "Actually, Weasley, a spell went a bit awry. You should know all about that. We all know most of the spells you cast are complete rubbish."

"Pleeze, boys, eez zees really necessary?"

Fleur's voice is soft and has a hint of something sweet and airy in it. Most of the men in the room glance at her and probably don't realize the way their eyes widen and their lips part. Draco, however, remains unaffected. Unknown to most is the fact that he has a bit of Veela in him. The blood is old - his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was a Veela - so he lacks most of the perks (he can't, for instance, summon a few balls of fire and chuck them at the Weasel). But, fortunately, it allows for him to remain untouched by the lure of any Veela.

Even if the blood wasn't there, Draco has his sights resolutely on the male half of the population, and he doubts even Veela charms could make him look with desire at anything with breasts.

But no one knows that about him either, and while he's certainly not ashamed of it, he has no reason to tell any of these people for no good reason.

"No," he answers simply, "it's not necessary. But apparently Weasley here finds it just so bloody much _fun_ that he can't go eight hours without starting something. A masochistic streak, perhaps."

He doesn't look at anyone. He simply strides into the room and lounges in his favourite chair, right near the open window, legs slung over one armrest with his head resting on the other.

"You're a stupid bloody git, Malfoy. That was no 'spell gone awry'." Draco winces at the high, squeaky pitch the red-head takes as he imitates the blonde teen. "You must be up to something."

Draco smirks. "Yes, a Malfoy is always up to something. Can't turn your back on us for two seconds. We might just turn spy for the light side and give up priceless information that leads to the defeat of _six_ Death Eaters in You-Know-Who's inner circle." He lets his head loll back, lets his hair hang down and swing slightly in the muggy breeze coming in through the window. He wishes, absently, that he could wear short sleeves.

"That's not what I meant - "

"And, of course, you can't trust the tests the Order put me through. Even if I pass with flying colours under veritaserum, you know a Malfoy will always find a way to lie. After all, how hard can it be for one of us to fool Dumbledore and half the Aurors in London?"

"I know that, but - "

"And you're absolutely right, the noise upstairs this morning was me trying to find a way to get the Dark Lord into my room so he can have his wicked way with me and then slither along and finish you all off in your sleep."

"_Malfoy."_

Patented Malfoy smirk firmly in place, Draco raises his head a fraction, one pale eyebrow perfectly cocked. "Yes, Weasley?"

The Weasel has turned beet red and it makes his freckles stand out in a most unappealing way. "That's not what I was getting at."

Silence reigns for a moment. Draco lets it hang there, let's the discomfort ripen, before he chuckles and closes his eyes, letting his head fall again.

"I'm sure it wasn't, Weasley. I'm just making a point."

The following silence is absolute. Draco grins the patented Malfoy I've-just-bested-you-half-sneer grin and turns his head back toward the ceiling.

"Malfoy?"

Bill's tentative voice seems to break the spell and there's a chorus of whispering fabric as people shift in their seats.

"Hm?" Draco doesn't bother to look at the man's scarred face. He'd met Bill once, before Fenrir got to him, in Gringott's before fourth year. He was very handsome, very poised for a Weasley, and Draco, who had been just past the freak-out stage in accepting his own sexuality, had thought, for a moment, that he wouldn't mind running his hands through that long, ginger hair. Now, every time Draco looks at him, he's reminded of his ten-minute fourteen-year-old crush, and the deep scars serve only to remind him of the horrible things one could lose in this war.

"What _were_ you doing upstairs, really? Because anyone your age with the capacity of wandless magic you have can't mess up a _scourgify_ bad enough to make that kind of racket..."

His voice is rather smooth, Draco thinks, and if it weren't for the fact that he were horribly scarred and straight and about to be married to a woman, Draco may have taken a stab at getting him in the sack. (He could have, later, claimed it was only to traumatize the Weasley family, of course.)

"It wasn't a _scourgify,_" he says in his haughty, most arrogant tone, and leaves it at that. It's one of his most useful tricks. Give as little explanation as you can and sound as petulant as possible while doing it, and no one will question a thing; no one will even notice that the answer you gave wasn't an answer at all.

His arm is itching again. He wishes he could delve under the fabric and scratch at his scabs. Of all the things he had been taught on the dark side, glamours weren't one of them, and he wishes now that he had put aside his resentment for his Dark Arts tutors long enough to ask them how to do one.

He's spared any more interrogation as Mrs. Weasley's voice rings out "Dinner!". He waits until everyone else has filed out of the room (Ron eagerly bounding ahead) before he gets to his feet and follows. He knows he won't be able to eat much tonight. He eats little as it is, despite Mrs. Weasley's urging for everyone to "Eat up, eat up, there's plenty!", but tonight, with his meeting with Dumbledore looming, the thought of food doesn't appeal to him at all.

By the time he reaches the kitchen, everyone has already squeezed into a spot around the table, and the only place left for him is in between Potter and Nymphadora. He shimmies his way in and nods a hello at the Auror, who grins at him and promptly puts her elbow in the butter dish. Potter glances at him, his green eyes flashing for only a moment, before he turns back to Weasley and continues talking in hushed tones.

Even for their large party, Draco can tell there's more food than necessary. There are three platters of sliced roast chicken (separated on each platter - half white meat, half dark), mounds of broiled potatoes, steamed vegetables, several boats of gravy, dinner rolls...the sight of such a large amount of food makes Draco simultaneously salivate and gag. It smells both wonderful and horrible.

People begin to pass around the plates. He takes a slice of chicken breast and a few steamed carrots and peas, but lets everything else pass by him. Weasley, he notices, takes some of everything, sometimes twice if a platter makes its way to him a second time. His own plate looks pitiful in comparison, but he can barely see himself finishing what he's taken. Potter glances at Draco out of the corner of his eye, but if he notices anything he doesn't voice it. Draco finds himself grateful for that.

His relationship with food is...strange.

He _wants_ to eat more. Or, at least, he knows he _should_ want to eat more. After all those months in the manor basement, a feast like this should leave him gasping for breath with his trousers undone. The problem is that he's afraid to. He's afraid that if he lets himself grow used to eating again, it will be taken away again and he'd rather be prepared. If he's used to eating small amounts, eating nothing at all will come as less of a shock.

It's stupid and he knows it, but he can't bring himself to stop it. At first, when he'd escaped from the basement, he physically couldn't eat more than a few bites at a time without being sick. His body had forgotten how to handle food. Now, he savours every bite, every morsel of food he gets, but after a few bites his mind recalls that nauseous feeling of eating after months of not, and he has to stop and catch his breath.

For six weeks, no one has commented on how little he eats, and he's supremely glad of it. Dinner is a time for family and friends, and so for the most important minutes of every night, he is invisible to them.

As he cuts his carrots and snow peas into neat chunks, he lets the conversation at the table wash over him. Nympohadora is talking animatedly with Charlie and Bill Weasley, her hair changing from fluorescent pink to neon orange and back again in her excitement. Fleur is engaged in wedding planning with Mrs. Weasley, the Weaselette, and Granger. Potter is still whispering with Weasley while Mr. Weasley, Black, and the werewolf seem to be in a very deep discussion about the pros and cons of memory charms versus memory altering potions. The twins have their heads conspiratorially pushed together, matching smirks on their faces.

It's nice, for a moment, to have these light, careless bits of conversation fill his head. There's no talk of Voldemort or the war. No Death Eaters are mentioned, no business about missions or "Constant vigilance!". He pretends, just for a second, that he belongs here. He pretends that the past seven years haven't happened and that these people are his friends and family. He pretends that they care about him. He lets their unimportant banter replace the heavy, unpleasant thoughts in his head and for one glorious moment, Draco Malfoy knows what it is to be content.

He only dares pretend for a moment, then lets it pass him by and is once again aware of his own alienation.

Weasley has wolfed down half his meal by the time Draco has finished his vegetables and is moving onto his chicken. He cuts it, first, into bite-sized chunks, then pauses to sip at his glass of wine. It's a surprisingly nice flavour, earthy and not too sweet or too dry. He lets the liquid sit on his tongue for a few moments, lets the flavour materialize completely, before he swallows. His first bite of chicken is halfway to his mouth, and he's just about done enjoying the scent of it, when Granger pipes up, "Why do you always eat like that?"

Her tone is purely curious, nothing snotty or teasing about it, but it still catches Draco off-guard. No one has questioned the way he takes his meals for the last six weeks, mostly because mealtimes were the only times when everyone could be together and talk about whatever they pleased. It was a time for friends to socialize, and no one seemed to care enough to give Draco the time of day. Trust Granger to ruin it.

"I mean, I don't mean to sound rude. But you always eat so slowly. And you take so little..."

"Now that you mention it, he does look a little starved doesn't he?" Weasley asks through a mouthful of potatoes and veg, and the sight is more than a little revolting.

Draco just looks at her, one eyebrow cocked. "I like to enjoy my food, and I hardly think it's any of your business how I - "

He's cut off by Mrs. Weasley. "Oh dear, I hadn't noticed! Come now, here, have some more..."

She grabs his plate and piles more chicken onto it.

"No, I don't want anymore - "

"Nonsense, nonsense, you'll waste away eating like that!"

She piles on a heap of potatoes and another of vegetables.

"Stop, I've had enough - "

Rolls follow, two of them, and then gravy makes a pool on top of the potatoes and meat and the sight of it is making Draco's stomach turn. He can't eat that...his mind is screaming at him. He remembers eating a cockroach in the basement, desperate for someting - _anything_ - in his stomach and resenting his still perfect figure. The crunch and slime and still twitching legs are suddenly all he can taste.

Mrs. Weasley puts the plate down in front of him and the smell is at once mouth-watering and horrifying. He must look like a deer in headlights, he knows, so he snaps his expression quickly back into one of mild disgust.

_"It looks wonderful, doesn't it?" Lucius _whispers in his ear and he remembers being forced to watch his father eat mouthful after mouthful of high-end, mouth-watering cuisine - perfect, medium-rare steak and potatoes au gratin and chocolate mousse and pate and all sorts of delicacies. _"I'd offer you some, Draco, but pathetic creitns like you are undeserving. Now drink your potion, or I shall have to force you."_

He very nearly responds; nearly yells, "But I'm your son! I'm your son!". He catches himself just in time.

Mrs. Weasley is looking at him worriedly. "What's the matter, dear? Tuck in, tuck in!"

He takes a deep breath, steels his nerves, puts his last name on like a costume and, with a flawless derogatory tone, spits, "I don't want any more of your slop. Next time you would do well to listen to your guest's wishes before trying to fatten me up like a prize heifer."

Mrs. Weasley looks like she's been slapped. Her face drops and she looks caught somewhere between anger and sadness.

Draco thinks that, if he had to imagine the most loving, most caring mother, Mrs. Weasley would be as close as he could get (behind his own mother, of course). Inside, in the deep, secret place in his heart where the real him lives, he likes her. He thinks she's rather marvelous. And it's this deep, secret place that feels suddenly sick for having put that look on her face.

He can feel the heated stares he's getting. He can feel the conversation die down, feel the surprised, angry glares boring into his flesh. Mrs. Weasley opens her mouth as if she's going to say something, then seems to think better of it and simply turns away and squeezes around the table back to her seat.

He stands without speaking to anyone and shimmies out of his place, elbows tucked carefully by his side.

Potter glances at him again, and the hatred there is nearly palpable. If it weren't for the fact that Draco has long since steeled himself against every look of disgust and malice sent his way, he'd flinch. Instead, he just sneers as he grabs his wine glass and tips the remainder down his throat, mourning that he now has no time to enjoy the layers of flavour completely. No doubt the Saviour is wanting him to apologize to Mrs. Weasley (or wanting to deck him in the face). Draco thinks that he would apologize, if he had the choice, but he's still got the Malfoy in him turned up to the maximum, so he says nothing as he turns on his heel toward the door.

He freezes.

Dumbledore is standing in the doorway, blue eyes twinkling as usual.

A cold, hard knot sinks into the pit of Draco's stomach.

"Mr. Malfoy," the headmaster greets him kindly, "just the man I'm looking for. May I have a word?"

Draco is painfully aware that the table has gone silent, aware that everyone knows exactly why Dumbledore wants to speak with him, aware that more than a few are probably hoping the headmaster is going to turn the blonde out onto the street. But his face betrays nothing of his inner feelings and he doesn't look at any of the people he knows are looking at him. "Certainly, professor," he says with a calm he wishes he felt.

He follows Dumbledore out into the hall and into the sitting room. The headmaster lowers himself into one of the armchairs and gestures to the couch across from him, but Draco shakes his head in declination. He knows if he sits down he'll begin to fidget, and that's rule number fifteen in Malfoy etiquette - never let anyone see that you're nervous. If there was ever a time he wanted to appear the picture of a perfect, arrogant Malfoy, it's now.

"Lemon drop?" Dumbledore offers, pulling a candy from a pocket of his robes and holding it out between two fingers. Again Draco shakes his head. The old wizard just smiles at his and pops it into his own mouth instead and Draco is hit again with the feeling that he _knows_.  
"So, my dear boy, I imagine you know why I want to speak to you?"

A tick works in Draco's jaw and he paints a look of bored annoyance of his face. "I imagine, sir, that like everyone else, you've taken an occurrence this morning and blown it completely out of proportion?"

Those blue eyes don't stop twinkling for a second. Draco can't make up his mind whether to be indignant or annoyed by the headmaster's apparent enjoyment of the situation. "Draco, I know you didn't incorrectly perform a cleaning spell this morning, and I'll thank you to give me a bit more credit than that."

Draco's teeth are clenching together so hard it hurts.

"However, if you're unwilling to tell me what really happened, I won't push you on the matter. When I was a boy, I once made such a ruckus in my room that everyone else in the house went completely deaf for three days and_ still_ no one knows what I was doing. Why, I've been denying all theories for so long now that even _I've _forgotten what the whole ordeal was about. My boy, what I really want to talk about is your recent lack of personal care."

Inside, Draco is reeling like he's been punched in the gut. "My...lack of personal care, sir?"

"Severus has noticed it as well, and I'm sure he's already spoken to you about it. You're not sleeping well. You're getting thinner and thinner each day."

Draco narrows his eyes, refuses to look away from his old headmaster, no matter how much he wants to. "I'll tell you the same thing I told him. This is a war we're in, a war in which I've put myself at serious risk. It's bound to affect me a bit."

The silence stretches on for a long moment. Dumbledore's eyes seem to twinkle just that much less.

"Does this have anything to do, Mr. Malfoy, with the circumstances of your escape from Malfoy Manor?"

Draco hasn't told anyone of what happened in the basement. All he's told them is that, after months of planning, he managed to escape the grounds through a weak spot in the wards and apparate to Hogsmeade before flooing to his godfather's. No one knew that he'd spent half the day at Madam Rosmerta's struggling through a plate of roast beef and chips, running every half hour to the bathroom to purge before flooing to one of Snape's flats (he could only hope, at the time, that it was still the only one the Death Eaters were unaware he owned - he was lucky).

The feeling was worse. Dumbledore _knew something he shouldn't_, and if not, he certainly suspected and was most likely to start inferring something close to the truth. He'd gotten lucky during his interrogations by the Order. They'd been so preoccupied with asking him about how he escaped and what his true intentions were that they'd not asked a single question about what, exactly, he had escaped from.

"What circumstances would those be, professor?"

"Again I ask you to give me more credit than you seem to be at the moment, Draco. You're having nightmares. You're obviously not sleeping, and you're certainly not eating properly. You destroyed your room today, and Sirius has told me he heard you crying as you did it. Severus woke you up today from a nightmare so intense you were screaming in your sleep. Given all that has happened, and knowing that you failed an assignment given to you by Voldemort himself, it's only natural to assume that something unpleasant has happened."

Draco's hands begin to shake. He clasps them behind his back so Dumbledore doesn't see. He straightens his back and locks his knees and tries to tell _Lucius_, who is steadily getting louder in his ears (_"Pathetic and unworthy of your name."_), to shut up.

"I've nothing to tell you that you don't already know, sir. And as for my..." he pauses and musters as much disgust as he can, "_lack of personal care_, as you call it, I have already explained myself and will not do so a second time."

Dumbledore looks almost sad, as if he's disappointed in Draco. (_"Unworthy. Disappointment. Failure." _Shut up!) "I do wish you wouldn't lie to me, Mr. Malfoy. We are fighting on the same side, and as such I would like for us to trust one another. However, if you are unwilling, an old fool like me can hardly force you. I suppose the only thing left is for me to give you these."

He produces two flasks from his robe.

Draco stops breathing for a moment.

"What are they?"

"Potions, my boy. A dreamless sleep potion and a nutrient potion."

Nutrient potion.

His mind stops working, then jumps into action and starts to run at hyper speed. He can very nearly taste it. The dog shit taste of nutrient potions.

"No. I don't want any potions."

Dumbledore looks almost sympathetic. "I know they're unpleasant, and certainly no match for the natural counterparts, but I can't have you wasting away under my nose."

_"I can't have you wasting away under everyone's nose. You will drink your potion and you will accompany me to the Ministry and you will act like a proper pure blood. Drink it, Draco. Imperio!"_

Dumbledore holds the flasks out, both now opened, and Draco can _smell it_ and he stumbles backward away from it. "No! I can't...I don't need any potions, professor!"

For the first time since Draco has met him, Dumbledore looks confused. Almost. Contemplative, at least. He steps forward toward Draco, but he doesn't lower the flask first and Draco's resolve, having been cracking and peeling all night, breaks completely.

He stumbles away blindly down the hall, eyes glued to that goddamn flask and mind focused on nothing more than getting the hell away from it, and crashes through the dining room door. Immediately the smell of Mrs. Weasley's cooking assaults him from every side and the nutrient potion is still clinging to the inside of his nostrils and he's right back in the basement, _Lucius_ smirking at him and laughing at him while he chokes down the one thing that keeps him from thinning out and wasting away and dying - the one thing that allows him to be seen in public with his hair still lustrous and his figure still lithe and perfect.

His gag reflex goes off without his consent and he barely stops himself from vomiting. He's unaware, this time, of the attention he's drawing to himself. The werewolf has jumped to his feet and Mr. Weasley is squeezing himself around the table and Black is shouting something along the lines of "What the hell is the matter with you, Malfoy?", but Draco is falling further and further into the basement.

He feels his magic begin to swirl around him and this time he's powerless to stop it. A salt shaker goes whizzing across the room and smashes against the wall. He hears a window blow out.

_"You should count yourself lucky, Draco, that the Dark Lord wants you kept alive. In my eyes, worthless scum like you should be given nothing."_

Dumbledore comes flying into the room. Chaos is abounding. Wands are drawn and trying desperately to stop the china from vibrating, the walls from buckling, the table from levitating. But he still can't smell anything but warm food and thick, red potion and _Lucius _is laughing at him and his control over his magic is completely gone from him.

_"Oh no, look what you've done, cretin. You've spilled your potion all over the floor. Well, I hardly think you'll learn anything if I get you a new one...lick it up, scum. Lick up every last drop."_

He's on his knees. He's crying. He's mumbling to himself, "Worthless, nothing, yes, father, I know". His nails are digging into his scalp again, but the ten crescent moons of pain aren't enough to bring him back into himself.

"Draco. Draco stop this. Concentrate on me. Concentrate on my voice."

The words sound like they're in tongues. Blue eyes flit into his field of vision for a split-second and then are gone. He tries to find them again but he can't see them and the walls are starting to undulate with the force of his anguish.

Then there's lightening. Abruptly, a strong flash of it. And something endlessly black and something else the exaclt colour of an_ Avada Kedavra_.

"Look at me, Draco Malfoy."

A voice. Something other than _Lucius_. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the dark, dreary walls of his prison, behind his father's calm, silky, cutting voice. He looks up. There are green eyes, flitting in and out of existence.

"Look at me."

There are hands on his arms, tugging his fingers out of his hair, but these hands are gentle. They're not his father's.

The table thumps back onto the ground.

"Look at me. You are in Grimmauld Place and no one from the Dark side can find you here."

The walls begin to melt away. _Lucius'_ voice fades to a whisper. The walls stop buckling. The dishes lay still.

He's out of the basement, but he's unaware of where he is. Somewhere very cold and very grey, he thinks. There are voices, a lot of them, and the sound of crunching glass under feet. But all he can see are those vivid green eyes.

_"You have lost everything now, Draco." Lucius _murmurs before he fades away completely.

Draco sniffles, one last tear escaping his eye, before whispering "I know I have, father...I have lost everything," and falls into blissfully empty and silent darkness.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

He's lying on something soft and warm. He's comfortable, but the lights are much too bright. They paint his eyelids a harsh red and he groans as they force him awake. His eyes flutter, caught between the bright blurriness of the waking world and the deep, dark calm of sleep calling him back.

He groans as he forces himself to a sitting position. He feels oddly stiff, his muscles seeming to creak in protestation at his movement. He feels lightheaded and opts to keep his eyes closed for a moment until he's sure the room won't be spinning when he opens them. There's a hard, immovable brick in the pit of his stomach and all at once he recalls exactly what has happened and the brick turns ice cold.

He feels, for a moment, like he's going to panic. He gets the urge to get up and run as fast and as far as he can, or perhaps to bash his head against the wall until he passes out or perhaps gets a concussion. But it only lasts a moment. Lethargy is dripping over him like honey and his limbs feel heavy. He feels entirely too tired to panic about anything. He feels surprisingly still and calm. Everything has packed itself into the impenetrable, hard ball in his stomach and the mess he's made is firmly locked inside.

He feels, he imagines, like a true Malfoy should feel - cold and glassy and hard as ice.

He lets his eyes slide open. The first thing he notices is the open window. He's in the sitting room, then, he figures, and the breeze coming in from the inky darkness outside is marvelously cool. It must be nighttime, but he doesn't bother to wonder what time, exactly, it is.

The second thing he notices is that every single occupant of Grimmauld Place and of the Order of the Phoenix is sitting in the room with him. Moody, he notices, has arrived, and Severus has returned. The silence is absolute, but a few people are giving signifigant looks to each other as if they'd just broken off in the middle of conversation. Conversation, no doubt, about Draco.

The third thing he notices is that his shirt sleeves are still pulled down around his wrists and his wand is still tucked up the right one. For some reason, even after the spectacle he's made of himself, the knowledge that at least one secret is still safe sends a little bout of relief to his rapidly beating heart.

"How are you feeling, Draco?"

Draco's gaze locks onto the man sitting in the chair across from the couch he's currently sitting on. Dumbledore looks back at him over the rims of his half-moon glasses and suddenly Draco feels like he's in a therapy session, lying on a couch across from a psychiatrist. The thought unnerves him.

"Like hell, actually."

He furrows his brow. He had most certainly not meant to say that. He had meant to say 'Fine, professor, aside from a bit of a headache. Perhaps I should go to my room for a lie down.'

His former headmaster seems to catch the confusion written across his face. "Veritaserum, Mr. Malfoy, and I apologize for having administered it in your slumber, but the Order has agreed it cannot be avoided."

Anger swells in his chest, but it quickly squashes itself flat and packs itself into the hard, cold block in his stomach. His exhaustion won't allow him to be angry. The emotion slides off his glassy exterior and he feels nothing but a twinge of annoyance at Snape for having let them give him Veritaserum in his sleep against his will.

"Well, that was a rather shitty thing to do, but I suppose I can't blame you."

Being under Veritaserum is an odd experience. The truth spills from his lips unbidden and sometimes he finds himself more surprised than anyone else. He supposes that, after all these years, he has become most talented at lying to himself.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions now, Draco. Is that alright?"

"Is everyone going to stay here? I'd much rather it be just the two of us."

There's a hint of something in Dumbledore's expression - pity, perhaps - as he answers, "I'm sorry, Draco, but these people have a right to know. You broke Mr. Ron Weasley's nose with a salt shaker, dropped a table on Ms. Fleur Delacoeur's foot, and shattered a window with such force that it injured several people and left a shard of glass so deeply embedded in Mr. Charlie Weasley's shoulder that it took both Sirius and Remus to get it out safely and heal the wound. The Order of the Phoenix has put themselves in danger for you, Mr. Malfoy, and they deserve to know exactly why they are doing so."

Draco nods. Another bout of frustration slides off his smooth, icy barrier. "Fine, then. Get on with it."

"What made you lose control of your magic?"

Draco's jaw clenches. Well, then. They certainly weren't wasting any time. "I was...remembering things."

It's the truth, albeit a pitiful skirt around a full answer. Dumbledore nods his head in contemplation, but Draco can see a select few pairs of eyes roll around the room. He almost smirks at them.

He'd see how many eyes were rolling once they got the full truth out of him.

The thought of it puts a little crack in the brick in his stomach, enough to make him feel both sick at the thought of what he was about to reveal and, somehow, giddy at the prospect of shocking them all.

He had already shown them what beast was lurking inside of him. Now, deep inside, the beast is shamefully thrilled at being able to shatter their visions of the Draco Malfoy they think they know. The mixture of feelings, though far away and weakened by the tiredness running through his veins, is a nauseating combination.

"What were you remembering?"

"What happened to me back the manor."

"And what happened to you at Malfoy Manor?"

This time, Draco does smirk, and the monster inside him smirks along with him for having successfully been let out, even for just a moment. "Many things. Would you like to hear about my fanatical pureblood upbringing, my abusive childhood, the torture and murder of my mother, or the nine months of torture I got for failing to kill you?"

This seems to catch even Dumbledore off-guard. Now there are no rolling eyes. In fact, everyone is either looking directly at him in varying states of shock or looking at anything but him, oozing discomfort. Potter, he notices, is one of the few looking at him, and it's odd to see anything but hatred in those green eyes. It makes him almost uncomfortable. He's grown so used to the fire, the flashes of anger so intense they could melt steel; now, without the flames, with out the disgust, Potter's gaze is somehow unnerving. He looks...shocked, certainly, but there's something else, as well. Something that Draco can't quite put his finger on...like regret, but not quite, and somehow similar to sympathy.

He shakes his head and looks back at his headmaster. This is no time for Potter-watching.

"I would like to hear about anything and everything that you believe has culminated in the events of today. Tell me, Draco, about what has happened to you."

Draco opens his mouth to answer, but quite suddenly stops. A rush of memory takes hold of him and his breath freezes in his lungs. The hard little ball of everything in his stomach bursts like a firework and he's quite suddenly drowning in his own past and the cold, glassy, icy shield is shattered. He closes his eyes against the torrent of memory and emotion and forces his frozen lungs to breathe deeply and evenly.

"Slowly, Draco. Don't overwhelm yourself."

He gives a bitter laugh at Dumbledore's words. "Probably should have thought of that before you drugged me." Nevertheless, after a few minutes (and after surreptitiously leaning his hip onto the bruise on his wrist) he manages to push it away and get his head above water again. He focuses his mind, uses his years of discipline, shucks away the unwanted and forces himself to catalogue it all, one memory at a time. "Should I start like David Copperfield? 'I am born'? Or maybe a little later, when my father realized that it would be most effective to break me down and build me again in his image. It started when I was five..."

His blasphemous tongue begins the tale, and against his will though it may be, none of his eloquence has left him and he has the Order in the palm of his hand, perfectly still and quiet, an entirely captivated audience...

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I am five years old and my father is mad at me.

He's shouting at me and it makes me feel bad.

"Never again, Draco Lucius Malfoy! Never again utter any foul, muggle word in this household! You are a pureblood wizard! You shan't go about spreading the filth of the Mudbloods!"

I only asked him if we had a television. It's a word I heard from the stablegirl. She's my age and her mother wasn't born in our world. She's a muggle and the stablegirl said that, in their house, they have a wonderful little box that shows colourful stories that move and sing and dance. She says she likes it better than the dancing marionette her father bought her in Diagon Alley. I'd never heard of one before, but my father always says that we Malfoys have the best of everything.

I wish I hadn't asked him. I forgot that I wasn't supposed to talk to the stablegirl.

"And beyond that, you explicitly spoke to the little Mudblood girl. You are a Malfoy, and as such will consort with the proper sort, and that does not include filthy half-breeds and blood-traitors! Do I make myself clear, boy?"

I start to cry. I didn't mean to disappoint him. It's just that the little girl had been so kind to me, and she hadn't looked at all like the monsters father says non-pure-blood wizards and witches are. "I'm...I'm sorry fa-father. I won't speak to Cassy a-again."

Father brings his hand down and hits me across the face. The sudden sting makes me cry even harder.

"Speak properly, Draco! Stop that crying. Malfoys don't cry. And for Merlin's sake, don't speak the half-blood's filthy name!"

I try to stop crying. Really I do. But the harder I try the harder it gets and my cheek is hurting. "I-I'm sorry..."

Father raises his hand again, but before he can hit me, mother grabs his wrist. "Lucius, for heaven's sake, he's just a boy!"

I've never seen father look so angry. He looks ugly with that look on his face. "Go to bed, Draco, and you'll have no supper tonight. You are to stay in your room until I tell you it's alright to leave."

Father doesn't look at me when he talks. He looks at mother, and mother looks back at him and she looks like she's about to start crying. She looks so scared. I want to stay and ask her what's the matter, but I've already made father angry enough today, so I take off running to my room.

From my room I can hear my father yelling and my mother yelling back. Then there are some crashes and I hear mother scream and I don't stop crying for a long time.

It's turning dark outside when mother comes into my room. She doesn't say anything, but her face is red and her eyes are wet and there's a big bruise on her cheek and another one around her eye and she's limping.

"Mother?"

She still doesn't say anything. She just comes over to my bed and scoops me into her arms and holds me so tight it's hard to breathe. She starts to shake.

"Mother...why are you crying?"

She takes deep, shaky breaths, then pushes me back and looks into my eyes. "You must try not to anger your father, Draco. You must try very hard. We both must try very, very hard. Do you understand?"

I nod.

She stops crying and she smiles at me and brushes her soft thumb over my cheek. _"_My beautiful, beautiful Draco_,"_ she says, "My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."

I smile up at her. "I love you, mother."

She starts to cry again.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I am nine years old and my father is upset with me.

"What did you just say?"

I gulp. I have been careless with my tongue.

"Nothing, father. Nothing. I didn't say anything."

My father overheard me speaking to Dobby, my favourite house elf. I asked him, without checking to make sure we were alone, what, exactly, was wrong with Harry Potter? By everything I'd ever heard about him, he seemed wonderful in comparison to You-Know-Who. In fact, You-Know-Who seemed like a rather awful sort of person and wasn't it a good thing that Harry Potter had stopped him?

I shouldn't have been so careless. My father heard me.

"Don't lie to me, boy."

The force of his slap sends me sprawling on the floor.

"The Dark Lord is the greatest wizard ever to have lived, and his vision of a fully pure blood world is an ideal the Malfoy family shares!"

His walking stick catches me in the stomach and I find it hard to breathe.

"And Harry Potter is nothing but a pathetic half-blood whose filthy muggle mother bought him an extra few years. When the Dark Lord returns - and you know, Draco, that one day he will return - Harry Potter will be eradicated. How dare you speak of these things?"

"I'm sorry, father!" I gasp out, "I was...confused. I was not in my right mind. I know that the Dark Lord is untouchable. I know that Harry Potter is doomed. I know!"

He kneels down in front of me. His eyes are so cold...they're the eyes I'm afraid one day I'll see in the mirror.

"You know, do you? Well, I think perhaps you've forgotten. I think, perhaps, you need me to teach you again. And afterward you shall not forget again..."

He pulls out his wand and point it at me and says something I can't hear and it takes me a few minutes to realize, through the pain, that the person screaming is me.

I feel very sore, afterward and very tired. My mother whispers spell after spell as she runs her wand over my body and the all-over ache dulls.

_"_My beautiful, beautiful Draco_,"_ she says, and her voice is soft and almost reverent and it sounds as if she's apologizing for something but I can't imagine what, "My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."

My mind is hazy, as if my head has been stuffed with cotton, and all I can think is that she looks exceptionally pretty in the moonlight. "I love you," I mumble and then darkness takes me.

I'm not sure if the sound of my mother's tears is real or just in my dreams.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I am eleven and my father is angry with me.

Which is alright, because I've planned it this way.

"What did you do? How did you ruin our plan? The Boy Who Lived rejected your hand and I want to know why!"

I look at his forehead. Not into his eyes, because I don't want to seem like I'm challenging him. Not at my feet because a Malfoy never backs down. Just in the general direction of his face. Malfoy pride with subordinate obedience.

He arches an eyebrow but says nothing, waiting for my answer.

I haven't been slapped or degraded for my actions. I've learned well.

"I don't know, father. I offered to help keep him from making the wrong sorts of friends and he rejected me. I offered him my hand and he refused to take it."

Father seethes at this. "Filthy Saint Potter. Dumbledore has most likely already convinced him that a pathetic half-breed like him is somehow above the rest of us. Still. You have failed me. This was very important. I explained to you how important it was."

I know how important it was. If I could make friends with Harry Potter, the Malfoy family would come out on top no matter what. If, upon the Dark Lord's return, the dark side were to come out victorious, we could hand him over and win much favour. If the light side were to win, we would have The Boy Who Lived himself to vouch for us. It was of utmost importance.

But I've thankfully mucked it all up.

The first time I saw Harry Potter, I knew he was a good person. Genuinely good. It radiates off him in waves, great golden rays of goodness. And if I am ever to escape my father and save my mother, Harry Potter and everyone else needs to hate me with a passion. If I am close to no one, no one can be manipulated by my father.

Somewhere inside I felt a horrible pang of guilt as I spoke to Harry the way I did. I wish I had been born, for the millionth time, as anything else but a Malfoy so I could've genuinely been friends with him. I want more than anything else in the world to have friends like Harry Potter.

But I have thought ahead and my plan can't be compromised. I look at my mother to strengthen my resolve. She's standing behind father's left shoulder and her eyes are so sad.

I promise her, silently, that one day I'll make her eyes happy again.

Father's walking stick knocks the wind out of me as he jabs it into my chest and I hear a sickening crack. The pain makes the world flash from normal to white to black and back again. Bile rises in my throat.

"You will hate him, then, Draco, and show him what it means to be the enemy of a Malfoy."

I manage to nod through the pain. "Yes, father," I reply and hold back the tears that want to spill. He seems satisfied with this as he walks out of the room.

"Heal him, Narcissa," he says over his shoulder and he leaves, "But leave a bruise. I want him to be reminded for a while what happens when he fails me."

His footsteps fade and then my mother's arms are around me and she murmurs something and the pain in my chest disappears. I frown.

"He said to leave a bruise..."

Her blue eyes shine with unshed tears as she looks at me. "There is a bruise, darling, but I've taken away the pain. You must remember that, should he touch you there, you have to flinch as if the pain is still present. Do you understand?"

I nod. It's a big risk, but I know my mother can't bear the thought of putting me through pain.

"You have grown up too fast," she says sadly as she pulls me into a tight embrace, "Far too fast and I'm so sorry for it. My beautiful, beautiful Draco. My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."

I wrap my arms around her and breathe her perfume in deeply. "I love you."

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I am fifteen years old and my father is furious with me.

He has caught me kissing the gardener's child.

The gardener's _son_.

The gardener's _squib_ son.

And I am crying because the gardener's squib son is now staring up at me through pained eyes and he's covered in so much blood.

"Kill him, Draco. End his suffering."

I cry even harder. My father grabs the back of my hair in an iron grip and his voice hisses in my ear, "Stop that noise, boy, and do as I say."

I obediently stop my tears, even though the effort of doing so makes the cold spike in my chest twist painfully. I wipe my tears away and try my best to focus on Max's eyes; try not to see the blood running in rivulets down his face and arms and the great gaping wound over his heart.

"Kill him. He's in so much pain. Kill him. A Malfoy doesn't fear death."

I won't break my promise to myself. I look into Max's eyes and pray he can see the apology I'm trying to get across. I'm so sorry I got him into this. I'm sorry I stupidly stole a few awkward, adolescent kisses from him in the garden.

I'm sorry I can't put him out of his misery.

I shake my head and my father lets out a rather undignified growl. "_Avada Kedavra!"_ he says and the room is filled with that green light and Max's eyes go glassy and roll up into his head.

As father puts me under the Cruciatus Curse, he growls, "You _will_ be a proper pure-blood and produce an heir for the Malfoy family. And this will never happen again."

I don't scream anymore. If I scream, it lasts longer. If I scream, my mother will come bursting into the room to try and stop him and I refuse to have her beaten again on my account.

_"My beautiful, beautiful Draco,"_ I imagine her saying to me as she does every night, and the thought calms me, _"My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."_

"I love you," I breathe, quietly enough so that my father can't hear me under the scraping thumping noise my body makes as it writhes in pain.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I am sixteen and my father is proud of me.

The muggle woman is nearly dead, but not quite, and my father looks at me with the utmost pride.

"Well done, Draco. Well done. The Cruciatus again, I think, and then a nice Incendio."

I do as I'm told. I don't flinch as she flails and screams in pain again, don't bat an eye at the sight and sound of the flesh melting off her left hand as I incinerate it.

In this moment I am a perfect Malfoy.

"Good, good. Very well done, my son."

"My daughter...where's my daughter? Please, please, I want to see my daughter! Please, don't hurt her! Kill me, but don't hurt her!"

This is part of my training. The Dark Lord has ordered me to torture this woman. If I am successful, I shall be given the dark mark in less than a year's time (assuming I succeed in the killing of Dumbledore).

"Your daughter," I say coldly, "is not here. And you may not see her. You will die not knowing what will be done to her, and you should count that as a blessing."

This makes her wail even louder and I firmly push the nausea and the disgust away.

I am a perfect Malfoy.

I lean over her, press my wand into her stomach, murmur "_Incendio,_" and conjure a cold laugh that makes me want to throw myself off the Astronomy Tower. My wand is burning deeper and deeper into the flesh of her stomach and her screams are deafening in my ear, just inches from her mouth.

I'm sure my father won't be able to hear me over her screams. I whisper in her ear, "Your daughter will be safe. We do not have her. She is safe and she will live and it's not enough but I'm so, so sorry."

She looks at me, eyes wide and shining, and I pull my wand out of the deep burn I've made. She stops screaming, but her sobs increase and she says nothing as she looks at me.

"I am telling you the truth," I say, my cold Malfoy voice echoing in the small room, "It is a small mercy."

For the barest of moments, her mouth works silently and I think I can see the words 'Thank you' form, but then she starts to sob again and I can't be sure I've seen it at all.

"Good, my son. Now...finish it."

I smirk at my father. "No, no, father. My instructions were to torture and bury the filthy muggle, and I cannot go against our Lord's wishes. You must kill her."

His blue-grey eyes narrow, calculating, trying to look into my very skull to see whether I am following orders or being a coward, but I don't flinch. I have grown up so much, have learned so much, and now I can withstand his stare and offer him a mirror of it.

He smiles at me, a conniving little smile, and says, "Very clever, my son. Very clever. The Dark Lord would not want you to disobey his orders. A test, perhaps, of our intelligence and loyalty. Well done."

Then the green light is all-encompassing and the muggle's sobbing stops.

I levitate her out into the garden where a hole is already dug. I don't look at her as I point my wand at the pile of dirt and it goes whizzing through the air to settle on her body. My father shakes my hand when it's all said and done, and I make my way calmly to my bedroom chambers where I immediately head to my ensuite and empty my stomach into the toilet.

I vomit until all I'm doing is heaving and bringing nothing up, and even then I retch until I feel I'm going to pass out.

My mother glides in. She says nothing, but rubs comforting little circles on my back until I'm finished and am able to stand up and flush away my mess. I point my wand at my own mouth and perform a few choice cleaning and freshening charms. We don't say anything to each other. We simply walk back into my room and she looks respectfully away while I put on my pyjamas, and then we embrace each other as she whispers, _"_My beautiful, beautiful Draco. My beautiful heart, you are my most precious."

"I love you," I whisper back.

And then I crawl into bed and she brushes her cool hand down one side of my face and sweeps away.

I do not sleep for many nights afterward.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I'm not sure how old I am and my father is torturing me.

I haven't eaten since he put me down here. That was July. I've no idea how long I've been down here. Six months, at least, because the last time my father put me under the Imperius curse and made me accompany him to the Ministry (so that no one gets suspicious of my whereabouts) it was cold and snowy outside and everything was lit up with lights and decorations.

I don't know how long it's been since then. Two weeks, two months, two years. I might still be sixteen. Seventeen, maybe (can June have come already?). Or maybe I'm into my twenties already. There are no windows in my cell and therefore no way to separate the days from the nights. My life just stretches on, an indefinitely long day with short bursts of sleep throughout.

My stomach doesn't growl anymore. I think my body has resigned itself to the fact that it won't do any good. But nothing can stop the hunger. It's been so long since I've eaten anything. Last night, after having watched my father devour an entire three course meal, I found a cockroach crawling across the floor.

Eating it, I sickened myself with how marvelous it felt to be finally eating something.

I wish I were skinny. I wish I were skin and bones. I wish my ribs and hips and spine stuck out grotesquely like they should be on someone who's malnourished. My traitorous, perfect body, kept alive by nourishment potions, drives me insane. I am still the picture of the Malfoy my father trained me to be, even as he makes sure, in every other way, I know I'm not worthy enough to be so.

I wish he'd just kill me. I wish he'd let me waste away. If I could just run my hands over my ribs and feel horrible, macabre indents where flesh should be...if I could just see for myself my impending death, at least there would be satisfaction in knowing he couldn't torture me much longer. It would be a reminder that escape is coming.

But I am still perfect. I am still gorgeous. As it has been all my life, I am flawless on the outside while inside I am suffering.

Now I can hear my mother screaming again. They're torturing her. I know they are. Father has told me. They keep her in the room next to mine so I can hear everything. This is her punishment for trying to protect me when the Dark Lord handed down my punishment.

I can't make up my mind which is worse - hearing her screams and knowing she's in pain or the great yawning silence and wondering if she's dead.

Today it's different. It's going on for too long, uninterrupted. She's wailing like I've never heard before, not even when father tells me that Greyback is "having a turn" with her. She's screaming like they're ripping her soul in half.

Suddenly, there are words. She's screaming something intelligible, and that's never happened before either.

If there were something in my stomach, I'd thrown it up as I hear what she's saying.

_"_My beautiful, beautiful Draco! My beautiful heart, you are my most precious!_"_

I know what it means. She only ever says that when I go to sleep. She's letting me know.

She's going to sleep now.

Silent tears begin to trickle down my cheeks. My mother...my _mother_...

"I love you," I whisper, and just like that it's silent.

Then the silence is deafening. It's absolute and I become aware of just how cold I am.

Time passes. How much time, I don't know. I feel numb. I feel nothing.

There are footsteps, and then my father's cool, stony, unrelenting voice. "She's gone, Draco. She's gone." And then cruel laughter that seems to stab me right in the chest.

I surprise myself. I don't sob or yell or break my hands pounding against the walls. I simply sit and I cry and it must be hours before the tears stop. Hours before I can think of anything else but her beautiful, loving face and the smile she reserved only for me. Hours before I can think of anything else except the fact that her death is entirely my fault.

The next time my father comes in with his cup of strong black coffee and plate of goodies and flask of nutrient potion, I look at him with defiance for the first time since I've been down here. He raises one elegant eyebrow as he bites into a dainty and slides my flask over to me. "What is it, Draco? Something you have to say to me?" His wand is suddenly in his hand and I know I'm about to put myself in a world of pain but I know if I don't say it I'll regret it until the day I die.

"One day," I say, and my voice is surprisingly rough from my tears, "I'm going to get out of here, and the day I do you had better start getting very frightened, because I'm going to come back and make you my bitch."

I intentionally choose the crassest term I can think of and it gets the desired effect. His face twists into an ugly snarl as he unleashes curse after curse at me.

Later, as I'm sitting alone in my cell again and all my wounds have been healed but it hurts intensely for me to move at all, I smile, just the tiniest smile.

My father has created a monster and I vow, at this moment, that one day I'm going to unleash the monster on him and make him pay.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

"I escaped," Draco says, "as soon as I could after that. I waited for an opportune moment and then I attacked my father when he came in one day and knocked him out. I used his wand to _Accio_ my own and the rest you already know. I knew a weak spot in the wards and made a mad dash for it. By the time the Death Eaters found my father and realized I was escaping, I was already off the property and apparating to Hogsmeade."

There's a certain freedom, Draco finds, in having the complete truth on the table. He doesn't look at anyone aside from Dumbledore. He can feel the tears on his cheeks and he doesn't think he can handle the looks he knows he'll be getting from everyone else.

Pity.

Suspicion.

Shock.

He has his own emotions to deal with (not the least of which is embarrassment for crying in front of these people) and he can't deal with theirs, too. Tears are still working their way silently down his cheeks and he feels that at any moment he's liable to lose consciousness.

He's so tired. He wants to sleep so badly.

"If that's all, then, I think I'm going to go to bed."

Dumbledore nods at him and no one else says a thing and Draco knows that the second they hear his door close they'll be talking about him but he can't bring himself to care. Severus makes as if to stand and follow him, but Draco mumbles, "Later, Severus," and the potions master sits again.

He trudges up the stairs and into his room. As he shucks off his clothes, the world slides in and out of focus. He collapses naked under the covers and falls into a deep sleep before his head hits the pillow.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

Another heavy chapter.

The next little bit will have more lightness to it, and a lot more Harry.

Keep those reviews comin'!


	3. Chapter 3

Hello, yet again.

I've been really struggling with this chapter. As it's a very delicate point in the story, I found it hard to get the tone just right (not too angsty, not too light, as realistic as possible). Did I succeed? Well...not to me, but then again, I tend to despise everything I write, so don't take my word for it. If you like it, good. Thank you. You flatter me. If not...welcome to the club. We've got cookies.

Have fun with it, in any case.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

The gravity of his situation hits him like a fist in the chest in the early hours of the morning.

He wakes up suddenly but, thankfully, scream-free. A muted grey light is shining through it window casting odd, half-there shadows on the floor. His sheets are soft against his naked skin and he realizes that everything - _everything_ - has changed.

They know. They know it all. They know why he's been the way he's been, why he can't sleep or eat or say anything nice. They know the exact extent to which he has been fucked over.

He fully expects his chest to tighten and his vision to go blurry and his mind to go completely blank aside from the phrase "You've fucked it up," but instead he feels an odd mixture of renewal and fear.

He doesn't have to pretend anymore. The mystique and aloofness that his last name has provided him all these years has been completely shattered. The name "Malfoy" will mean nothing to them now, aside, perhaps, from the vision of blood and torture and loss (or is that just what it means to him?).

Now that they know what has happened, know the reason for everything, the bias has tilted. They'll have no clue how to deal with a Draco Malfoy they know has been broken. The ability he had to make them all hate him is gone. He has done the one thing that ever had any probability of changing their perception of him.

He told them the truth.

His heart flutters in his chest. His palms begin to sweat. A chill runs down his spine and he pulls the blanket up to his chin.

He's terrified by this new prospect. He has a second chance to be someone other than Lucius Malfoy Jr. But without his lies to hide behind, without the perfect, untouchable Malfoy skin he's worn for the better part of seventeen years, he's completely lost. It's been so long since he's been honest with himself; so long since he's not stifled every single natural impulse in order to summon the vision of an insufferable, unbearable child.

He realizes, with horrible clarity, that for all his wanting to shuck off his glass husk, he hasn't got a fucking clue who he really is. And with this realization comes an icy wave of horror.

What if he's worse than the Malfoy he's been pretending to be? What if the monster lurks even larger and more terrible is his true heart? He's so good at lying to everyone, so good at lying to himself...perhaps he's been lying to himself all along. Maybe he's a Malfoy at heart, through and through, cold and terrible and brutal.

Pretending to be nice, he thinks, is just as terrible as pretending to be cruel. Goodness means nothing if it's insincere. Taking off the monster costume is useless if the actor inside is a monster, too.

But he wants, wants, _wants_ so badly to be something other than the villain.

Doesn't he? Or is that yearning a lie, too?

_Can't tell your own lies from your own truths anymore? How pathetic... Lucius _ whispers in his ear.

He flinches violently. Quickly, he rises and dresses. He knows that with these thoughts swirling in his head, he won't sleep again, and he doesn't want to stay in his room and find out just how loud _Lucius_ feels like getting. He has enough on his mind without the walls crumbling in on him.

He tip-toes downstairs through the eerily silent house, avoiding the creaky steps, and heads toward the kitchen. A cuppa sounds wonderful at the moment. Perhaps he'll open the window and let the wind blow his thoughts away.

He's not expecting to see Harry Potter already sitting at the table.

Potter looks just as surprised to see Draco as Draco is to see him. "Malfoy?"

A million scathing retorts go shooting through Draco's brain. _Very observant, Potter. No, it's the tooth fairy, Potter. Well done, you managed to remember my name; now if you could remember anything else half so well I'd feel better about our chances in this war._ He clenches his jaw to keep them inside.

He thinks quickly. What would he say if he weren't a Malfoy? What's the thought that he'd usually stomp flat before it even had the chance to fully form?

He has no idea.

"Yeah." A bloated pause. "I...couldn't sleep."

Harry looks at him. He looks at Harry.

"...You?"

Is that alright? Shouldn't he want to know why the Boy Who Lived is sitting alone in the dark?

Potter regards him for a moment, a hint of suspicion or something like it burning in his eyes. "The same."

The silence stretches out and becomes more awkward with each passing second.

"I made a pot of tea, if you'd like some."

Draco nods. Pouring the tea gives him something else to focus on besides the million questions zipping though his head. He inhales the rich, deep scent wafting from his mug and temporarily lets it blank his mind. "Thank you, Potter."

There. That sounds alright. That sounds like something he'd never allow himself to say, like something he'd stifle.

It seems to surprise the dark-haired wizard and he looks at Draco with his mouth just slightly open as the blond sits gingerly and straight-backed across from him. Green eyes widen almost comically. The stare brings a flash of green eyes inside convulsing walls rushing into Draco's mind's eye. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

"What?" he asks, and he thinks that's okay, too, because a proper Malfoy always says 'Pardon me'.

Potter clicks his jaw shut and looks away. In the dim light, Draco can just make out the boy's eyes narrow a fraction. "It's just...you've never said that to me before. Never, you know, said thank you. It's weird."

Draco shrugs. "I suppose it is."

The tea is steeped perfectly and just sweetened enough. Draco has always found Mrs. Weasley makes it just a tad too weak and too sugary. _Dear lord, Potter, who taught you to make tea, the half-giant? Did the muggles never teach you how to make a proper cuppa?_ "You make good tea, Potter," he says, taking another long sip, "It's...better than anything else I've had these last few weeks. I may just recruit you to make it for me every morning." He offers a small smile that he hopes is, if not friendly, at least not menacing.

He feels strange as the words come from his mouth. It's disconcerting censoring the cruel instead of the kind. Now he understands why Potter has been looking at him that way. If he could, he'd be giving himself the same look.

It's simply weird being nice to Harry Potter.

Is this who he is? He can't decide whether he's still lying or not...is this the real Draco speaking or has he just done a complete turnover and started faking the nice instead of the malicious?

Trying to figure it out makes his head spin.

Harry doesn't look anywhere else but directly at Draco. His bright green gaze doesn't waver, staying completely focused on the blonde, eyebrows drawn down in suspicious contemplation.

"You're certainly different this morning."

His tone is neutral, but it has a certain sharp edge to it.

Something about it rubs Draco distinctly the wrong way.

"Wouldn't you be, if you were in my shoes?"

"Suppose I would."

Silence stretches on and on, broken only by the small, uncomfortable sips of tea Draco takes. He keeps his face schooled to complete blankness, eyes trained on the mug in his hands. Without the confrontational air, sitting with Potter is more awkward than a house elf in a ballet. He considers just taking his tea back to his room, but he knows that if he has to sit staring at those four walls the monster in his chest will start to stir, and he'd rather be leered at by Potter than yelled at by _Lucius_.

"I'm not about to sprout devil horns and bat wings, no matter how long you stare at me, Potter."

It comes out with less acidity than it usually would, more a simple statement than an actual attack, and Draco finds that without the dripping sarcasm behind it, it almost sounds pleasantly witty.

Harry blinks and looks down, bringing his cup to his lips.

"I should hope not."

It's the tone that gets to Draco. Not quite tinged with its usual hatred, but rather just stiff, as if Potter were speaking to a stranger about whom he'd heard rumours of something terrible. Draco's prepared for pity and suspicion - for avoidance and lots of 'ahem, ahem's - but this...it's too flat, too bland, and obviously it means Potter is hiding something because he's always, _always_ passionate when he speaks to the blond. He'd rather take outright accusations or confrontations - he'd rather take the whole, unforgiving truth - than have to listen to this from Potter of all people.

"I'm only going to say this once, Potter, so listen up. I'm going to say it and then throw up in my mouth a little for being so horrendously sappy and optimistic."

He rather likes the forceful tone he's put into his voice, so different from his usual haughty aloofness.

Their eyes lock across the table and some of the fire is back in his green eyes and it makes Draco feel just a tad better. _There_ it is. The fire only he has ever been able to put in those eyes. It's not hatred this time; it's something softer than that, something cooler. Determination, maybe. In any case, it satisfies Draco.

Even if everything else has to change, he refuses to be looked at by Harry Potter with guarded eyes.

"I'm going to try very hard not to be a total git. I'm not your worst enemy. You only think that because it's exactly what I wanted you to think."

The statement seems to hit Potter like a brick to the face. He looks, abruptly, stunned.

"Well...I..."

Draco smirks. "There's the bumbling Potter I've always known."

Yes. Without the sneer, he rather likes these quips of his.

Potter opens and closes his mouth a few times, a somewhat indignant look on his face, before sighing heavily and grinding out, "This is such a mind fuck."

Draco laughs before he has a chance to think about what he's doing (which is very un0Malfoy and sends a pleasing warmth into the pit of his stomach). "How crass," he says as he raises his cup to his lips.

Harry looks wary as he leans back in his chair, jaw just ever-so-slightly tightened. "You're not...you, anymore."

Draco raises on eyebrow. "Better?"

Behind circular glasses, eyes narrow. "Just different."

That hurts, but not too terribly, and Draco doesn't expect anything more from the boy. He has, after all, made his life hell for the better part of the last decade.

Draco wonders, not for the first time, what it would've been like if his hand had been accepted on the train all those years ago. For all he has hated him, for all his flaws, Draco knows that there's no better friend than Harry Potter, and he's always yearned for that kind of devotion. He has always wanted to be close to Harry Potter and so, for his entire life, he has made himself hate him with a passion.

The things that he wants, the things that he loves, always go up in smoke, after all. And the only way he could live with the things he said and did to everyone was by convincing himself he really did hate them. (He always shoved to little part of himself that said "You're a liar" deep underneath the thick layer of Malfoy ice.)

Now, sitting across from the Boy Who Lived in the awkward, yawning silence, Draco looks at him and doesn't tell himself that Potter is ugly and stupid and a prat. He looks at him as if for the first time.

He's not as thin as he once was, Draco notices, and under his thin nightshirt lithe muscle is clearly visible. His dark hair, while obviously unmanageable, isn't the rat's nest he thought it was. In fact, it looks rather soft; rather touchable, even if he looks perpetually as if he's just rolled out of bed.

But it's the eyes that catch Draco's attention. (He once again ignores the sudden vision of green, green eyes flashing over dark, laughing walls).

They really are an astounding colour, the richest jade Draco has ever seen, and if one ignores he ignores the ridiculous spectacles (and he'll go to his grave insisting that those _are_ the most ridiculous glasses he's ever seen) they're deep and, quite frankly, gorgeous. But more than that, there's a haunted quality to them. There's doubt and loss in those eyes.

Harry Potter wears all his flaws not on his sleeve, but in his eyes.

It's that, Draco decides, that makes him attractive. All his fangirl followers probably can't pin it down, the reason he's so sexy to them. It's his vulnerable eyes, Draco thinks. It's the hideous, dented perfection of his eyes.

"Stop _staring_ at me like that. It's weird."

That tears another unexpected laugh from Draco's throat. ""I'm just looking at you. Let us not forget you were doing the same thing to me not ten minutes ago."

He averts his gaze, embarassed, but black eyebrows raise regardless. "I had a legitimate reason. What's your excuse?"

_Just as much of a sodding prat as I thought. Bit worse for wear, aren't you? I didn't think I could think any less of you, but low and behold..._

No, no, that wouldn't do.

_You seem like a lovely fellow, Potter. Rather a magnificent bloke, you are._

The thought of saying that makes him want to wrinkle his nose in disgust.

Potter is looking at him strangely and he realizes he must look an awful fool, thinking so hard about such a simple question.

_Be honest. Don't think about it. Just..._

He lets his mind go compeltely blank. "You're not horrible, I've decided. Not a lost cause, anyway."

Really, Draco thinks, if Harry keeps on getting that incredulous look on his face, eventually it'll stick that way.

"Yeah, well...thanks, Malfoy, I guess..."

An early morning breeze ruffles the kitchen curtains. The two boys look anywhere but each other.

How do normal people make small talk? Draco has no idea. He can list off every detail of what is and is not acceptable in idle chatter in high society, but when it comes to this - to just sitting and talking - he's clueless. And Harry's glance still has that hint of coldness, that touch of 'I'm not sure I can trust you yet'; Draco can tell he's trying to hide it, probably out of some hero-complex side effect whereby he doesn't want to offend anyone, but he's failing miserably.

How do you talk to someone you've only just realized you don't hate; who probably still hates you?

"I...quite like to fence."

Harry stares at him as if he's grown two heads.

"And...I like music. I can play the violin. And the piano."

Harry stares at him so long Draco wonders if the boy is planning on ever blinking. Slowly, ever so slowly, green eyes narrow and, a beat later, soften just a hint. Potter leans forward in his chair.

"I can cook really well."

Draco smiles. It's awkward, but it suffices for the moment. It's a start.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

There you go.

I think the reason I'm not so pleased with it is that I can't make it perfectly true to character without going on for five hundred pages, and I'd like to keep this fiction down to under twenty chapters. Seeing as I've got a lot of plot left to cover (A LOT), I'm afraid that some elements are going to slip, especially this little "Draco's new persona" arc. This makes me sad, but it's necessary.

But try to enjoy it anyway? -ridiculously hopeful-

Next chapter I'm looking to put in a fun scene with the twins. (A little break from all the angst.)

As usual, this was typed in WordPad, so forgive/point out to me any little mistakes I missed.


	4. Chapter 4

Welcome to Chapter 4 (aka, my personal hell). This chapter has been rewritten a stupid amount of times, and I'm still a bit disappointed in it. Still, I feel like I'm getting nowhere editing my fingers raw, so here it is.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

By the time the sun is rising and there are sounds of movement upstairs, Draco has allowed himself to hope that maybe, just maybe, he's not a complete git, deep down; that maybe there's still a chance for him to redeem himself. If nothing else, he thinks, at least Harry Potter doesn't completely despise him.

He and Harry speak at length about what they can and can't do, what they like and don't like, keeping everything purposely light in tone. Only simple things - favourite colours, hobbies, quidditch teams. Draco imagines it's what everyone else feels like at the dinner table. It's meaningless conversation and, for exactly that reason, it's means the world to him. It reminds him that, even amongst all the doubt, there are still things about himself that he knows for certain.

Harry's smile gets easier and easier as time passes. He even laughs from time to time. Draco doesn't kid himself - he knows Potter is nowhere near his new best friend. But the two, at least, are capable of carrying on a civil conversation, and in the end that's not too bad.

Loathe as he is to admit it, he even finds Harry charming, in a sort of easygoing, overly humble kind of way. He'd even go so far as to say that the Boy Who Lived is attractive. He can see why Ginevra likes him.

He admits it once, to himself, than catches exactly where this train of thought can take him and immediately summons his Malfoy coldness and pushes the thought aside. He has learned that it's easiest to banish feelings in their beginning stages; best to stop himself hard in his tracks now before it gets out of hand. Best to reign it in while it's still an absentminded admiration, before it blossoms into anything remotely stronger than that. (All the same, he can't help but wonder momentarily if, deep inside, he's found Potter attractive all along.)

He reminds himself that everything he touches turns to shit and, as usual, it works.

He remembers the gardener's son bleeding on the living room floor.

That works even better.

_Lucius_ whispers, quiet and yet piercing, _How adorable. The cretin wants the golden boy. Go ahead, try to charm him. It'll be endless amusement, seeing how harshly he can reject you._

By the time Ron meanders into the kitchen, bleary eyed and scratching heartily at his bum, Draco has remembered that as long as no one loves him and he loves no one, everyone who matters will be safe.

The redhead glances in his direction briefly, but looks only at Harry as he says, "Good morning, mate," voice still husky from sleep.

Harry's face lights up immediately. Draco has long since stopped letting himself yearn for the ability to make anyone's face light up like that. The stab of jealously that flashes through his chest, therefore, just gets added to the admiration he's already pushed away, compressed into a ball and hidden in the deep recesses of his heart where no one will ever find it. (It strikes him that, for all he thought he could be himself, he's still repressing an awful lot...ironically enough, he shrugs off that thought, too.)

"Morning, Ron," Harry replies, and his tone is suddenly all sunshine and angel farts. (Later, Draco would vehemently deny that that phrase had ever popped into his head.)

Silence hangs heavy. Apparently the advent of a third person has rendered the vague, thin rapport that Harry and Draco had built up cumbersome. Ron looks again at Draco, then gives Harry a long, significant look, which Harry returns along with a shrug and a pair of raised eyebrows. The blonde can't shake the feeling that he's witnessing an entire conversation with the volume down, as if he's gone deaf. Finally, Weasley sighs heavily.

"Morning, Malfoy," he intones dryly. Draco blinks.

"Good morning, Weasley."

They look at each other for only a moment, during which time Draco wonders what the hell is supposed to happen next. It's even worse than it was with Harry. At least Harry has some infallible thing inside him which makes him care inexplicably for the down-trodden, even if it means being civil to the devil. Ron Weasley suffers no such affliction. People are good or bad in his books, no matter the cause, and the hatred in his eyes is proof of that. Somehow, Draco doesn't think a conversation about fencing and grade ten piano lessons will break the ice with him.

But he certainly doesn't want to spew his normal insults. Not this new, freshly discovered Draco. He's just finished convincing one member of the household he's not a completely sodding prat, and he doesn't want to ruin that with a slip of the tongue.

So where's the middle ground? What, exactly, should he say?

He's just starting to get worried when Weasley makes up his mind for him. The ginger turns on his heel, pours himself a cup of tea, then plunks himself at the table beside Harry, ignoring the blonde all together. "How'd you sleep, mate?"

"Alright."

"Fred and George were testing some new product until some stupid time at night. Didn't get to sleep until after three..."

Even though their conversation is clearly audible this time, Draco feels suddenly deaf again. _Oh, poor boy. Feeling dejected, are we? Didn't think one little conversation with the golden boy would help your chances, did you? Potter may tolerate you - it's his nature, but mark my words. No matter how much you try to play the part of the reformed Death Eater, no one will ever love you again._

He scourgifies his mug and sends it whizzing over to the counter as he stands. Harry looks at him. Ron barely spares him a glance.

His chest feels decidedly empty without the little spark of hope that had been there, insignificant and weak as it was.

"Thanks again, Potter," he says, "For the tea."

He's out the door before Potter can respond. All he catches is the strange glint in his eyes, the same one the brunette had given him the night before, and he still can't, for the life of him, figure out what it means.

He considers heading for the sitting room, as he usually would, but the too-fresh, too-raw memory of all those eyes...his traitorous tongue...the two vials of potion held in long, wrinkled fingers – the _smell_...

He turns abruptly and heads up the stairs instead. He can hear the faint sounds of the house waking up – creaking bed springs, shuffling footsteps, hissing pipes and the gentle hush of shower heads. He picks up his pace. Weasley has shot the small amount of confidence Harry's not-completely-hostile reaction had given him. He doesn't want to meet anyone else. He'd rather _Lucius_ and his four walls, he thinks. At least then, by the time they call him out, he's sure he'll have remembered that hope, even the faintest glimmer of it, has always made disappointment more bitter.

_Did you really think, Lucius _murmurs in his ear, acidic and sour, _that any of it would make any difference? You're even more pathetic than I thought._

Draco can't help but agree.

He plucks his wand from his sleeve, not trusting his wandless magic while _Lucius_ is whispering poison in his ear, and casts a murmured silencing charm at his door from the end of the hallway. He'd like to think that this time he'll tell _Lucius_ to shut up and he'll listen, but he knows better than that, and he doesn't want yet another fiasco that could've been avoided with a simple charm beforehand.

_You never were all that bright, despite what you and your mother liked to believe. Lucius_ hisses.

He pauses to deposit his wand back up his sleeve, focuses on keeping his breathing slow and calm until he can reach the silence and safety of his bedroom. He takes a step forward, then grunts as he finds himself on the floor, his bum aching dully, his forehead and nose throbbing, and his legs spread out in front of him in a most undignified way. It takes him a moment to realize that something large and hard and decidedly painful has hit him and sent him sprawling.

He considers glaring or spitting some venomous remark, but _Lucius_ is laughing and a headache is starting to form behind his temples and he finds he just doesn't have the energy to fake it. He wonders what he should do instead but that just makes him more tired.

_Remind me again, my dear boy, why you thought being "Draco" instead of "Malfoy" would make anything easier, Lucius_ says., and it's the one question Draco has an answer to.

'Because I'm a right stupid git, aren't I? A stupid bloody fucking cretin.'

"Merlin! Are you alright?"

He looks up.

Sirius Black looks back at him with his hand still on his bedroom doorknob (the door to which it belongs, Draco realizes, had been swung out and directly into his path).

"I'm fine," he says as he heaves himself back onto his feet, "Don't worry about it." He moves to sidestep both Black and the door, but a hand catches his elbow. He manages not to wince as it causes the fabric of his shirt to tug at the scabs on his arm.

"Look, I said I'm..." Draco trails off, irritation fading as he catches the look in the older man's eye. Unlike Potter's expression, Draco can read this one loud and clear. The animagus looks at him, then quickly away, then back at him, eyes wide and unblinking. His jaw is clenched and his eyebrows are drawn together. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then seems to think better of it and closes it again.

It's guilt. Loud and clear. Draco knows the look well enough. He sees it in the mirror every time he thinks of his mother.

He clears his throat. He feels suddenly, acutely uncomfortable. "I'm fine," he says again, but Black still doesn't move his hand. Instead he feels the fingers reflexively tighten, almost imperceptibly. The animagus' jaw clenches and his eyes harden and for some reason Draco is reminded of the look Potter gets when he's on a broom searching determinedly for the snitch.

"I'd like a word with you, Draco," Black says and before Draco can protest he's being pulled firmly by the arm into the animagus' room. He feels a scab split as the movement causes his shirt, already tugging at the wounds, to wrench free. Black, he assumes, puts his sharp intake of breath down to surprise and he counts himself lucky for that.

This arm is released once they're in the room and Black turns around to close the door and, of all the ridiculous things, Draco can't stop thinking about the fact that he's never been in anyone's room but his own. This one, certainly, isn't what he expected. It's even darker than his, the single window grimy and letting in only a grey filtered light. It looks even more like the Malfoy Manor basements than his own room and suddenly Draco's chest is tightening painfully and a lump is rising in his throat.

He's struck with the all-encompassing fear, ridiculous though he knows it is, that Black is locking him in here and he'll not eat for yet another nine months.

Stubbornly, he clenches his jaw until it aches and adamantly, resolutely, absolutely _refuses_ to cry. _Lucius_ doesn't have to say a word. Instead it's his own voice he hears hissing in his ear.

_Don't you dare cry, Draco. Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone._

_Not ever again. _

_Hold it the fuck together._

Only without putting on his cold mask and verbally ripping Black to shreds, Draco has no idea how to do that. His mind whirs, thoughts flitting back and forth faster than he can comprehend them. Should he try to get away again? No, Black is blocking the door. Should he feign an illness? Easily seen through with a simple diagnostic spell. Should he say he's tired and wants to go to bed? He's hungry and wants to go down to the kitchen? Should he act haughty or bored or nonchalant or worried or confused?

He doesn't know, so he settles for doing nothing at all, features carefully wiped blank, arms clasped behind his back. He looks at Black's forehead, just as he used to look at his father's. Not too subservient, but not confrontational, he thinks; just as with his father, he hopes it will help him escape with the least amount of damage.

Surrounded by the dank walls and stagnant air and low light, facing his second cousin, Draco can't seem to remember that he'd been promised complete safety here.

Black looks, of all things, confused. "You...you don't have to stand like that," he says, and the uncertainty isn't lost on the teen.

"Like what?" he asks and his voice is low and hollow, even in his own ears.

Black's eyebrows raise. "Like a soldier. You're tense and...look, just..." The animagus raises his arms and places both hands on Draco's shoulders, sliding them down to his elbows. The touch has Draco reeling on the inside and he barely reigns in the urge to slap them away. Black pulls and Draco releases his arms; lets them hang down by his sides. Black looks at least slightly pleased, even if a confused wrinkle is still etched across his forehead.

"That's better. Here, sit down," he urges and the _no, thank you_ is nearly out Draco's lips when Black reaches out to touch his shoulder (presumably, Draco thinks, to push him down onto the bed). He sits before his cousin can make contact again, straight-backed and as near to the edge of the bed as he can get. The blonde youth worries, for a moment, that he's done so too hastily; that perhaps he let just a bit of his panic show on his face as he lowered himself out of reach. But the animagus doesn't seem to notice. He simply lets his arm drop back to his side and plunks himself down onto the foot of the bed beside Draco.

Fear clings to the inside of his ribs, vice-like and unflinching. The room is closed in and the window isn't letting in any light and Order of the Phoenix or no, Draco can't forget the fact that the blood in Black's veins is as pure as his father's and Bellatrix's and, therefore, possibly just as cold. He wonders if Black's stint in Azkaban has stolen part of his mind, if this room will be yet another living tomb. He knows it ridiculous even as he thinks it – Black is as noble and fair and _Gryffindor_ as they come. Black might as well change his surname to Potter for all he represents the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

But his eyes are shadowed in the dim light and his mind's eye seems intent on filling in the blurry, dull spaces with the cold, calculating eyes of a murderous, rampant, pure-blood madman.

_Hold it together._

Resolutely, he peels the fear out from under his breast bone and tucks it away. He compresses it and reaches inside and throws it into the boiling, writhing mess in his heart and feels absolutely nothing. He makes sure his face is still schooled to stony blankness and makes himself dead.

He knows it won't last, this numbness, but it should get him through whatever Black is about to do. He hopes the inevitable explosion; the boiling over of the horrendous, ugly mess he's stuffed inside is worth the effort.

"I just wanted to apologize to you, Draco."

It's the second time Black has used his first name, and it makes him decidedly uncomfortable.

"I'm fine. I've dealt with worse than a door to the face," he replies in his dead, monotonous voice, and the animagus' jaw clenches at that. His hands, Draco notices, are fiddling with the fabric of his jeans at his knees, scraping at loose threads. He looks unnatural, Draco thinks. He's a Gryffindor, through and through; all bravado and if-you-think-I-can't-then-watch-me. It's like a cat barking to see him anxious.

"Not for that," Black says, and the ashamed tone of his voice makes Draco narrow his eyes. "I mean, I _am_ sorry for that. But..." he pauses, clears his throat, and looks directly into Draco's shuttered eyes, "I'm sorry that I wasn't there. I should've known...I saw the change that came over Narcissa when she married Lucius. She was never my favourite cousin, but she was a far sight better than Bellatrix."

Draco stiffens at his mother's name. He doesn't like where this is going, but if Black notices he doesn't show it. Instead he pushes forward.

"I should've gotten you out of there. You and your mother both. I knew better than anyone what pureblood idealists are capable of. I knew Lucius Malfoy was dangerous. I just...I should've done something. I could've sent an owl, at least. If not before I went..." he visibly shudders, though, to his credit, it isn't much, "...away, at least afterward. I came to save Harry, and by that time you were the so much like your father...it never occurred to me, even though I, of all people, should've known what your father -"

Draco cuts him off mid-sentence, standing abruptly and tugging his shirt down perhaps a little more forcefully than needed. The mass in his chest is roiling and expanding at Black's words.

"Don't," he says, still cold and quiet and dead, "Don't apologize. I don't want your pity. And furthermore, if you think you could've done anything, _anything_, for me or..." The words _my mother_ get caught in his throat. "You're a fool. What happened happened and I don't need your sympathy. What would you like me to say? I forgive you? _Sirius Black_ feels ever so sorry for not saving the second cousin he'd never met and that makes me feel oh _so_ much better?"

Black looks taken aback, his lips parted. "I didn't mean to - "

"Didn't mean to _what_?" Draco interrupts, his tone still belying nothing of the hot, sick mess spilling over inside himself. "Didn't mean to reduce my life to a problem you never thought to solve? A matter you forgot and let gather dust in a drawer and now you've got to owl the man in charge and invite him over for a cup of tea to say sorry? Or were you hoping for a tearful Black family reunion? Maybe you were hoping I'd embrace you as the father I never knew and you'd garner endless appreciation from the rest of the Order for coaxing yet another young pseudo-child out of his shell."

He expects the animagus to get angry. He expects denial or perhaps, at the very least, an affronted, sour look. Instead Black sits and looks at him, lips parted, eyebrows furrowed, and eyes curiously sad.

The monster in his chest is beating at his ribcage, now, and so Draco turns on his heel and strides, straight-backed, to the door. "Thanks anyway," he says, "For the sentiment."

"I'm here if you ever want to talk, Dra-"

He cuts off the animagus' offer, closing the door behind him. He doesn't run, as he wants to, because the last thing he wants is more attention. Instead he grapples with the monster in his chest as he strides purposefully and calmly to his room. He puts up several strong locking charms and strengthens the silencing charm he'd put up earlier; he even manages to strip and crawl into bed before the deadness falls away and he succumbs to the ruin inside.

He opens his mouth and the sound he emits is more than a scream, more than a wail; the beast roars up through his throat and it's the sound, he thinks, of the true Draco, the one deep inside whom he can't seem to coax out of hiding, shattering into a million pieces. It's the sound of the realization that he will never, ever be understood or loved; more importantly, it's the sound of the realization that he doesn't, evidently, deserve to be.

He has tried to unlock himself and it has garnered pity and apathy; _Lucius _was right all along. He's not good enough. He's worthless.

He doesn't bother to try reigning in his magic. He barely notices his loss of control over it. A thousand voices are talking all at once in his head, a cacophony of "You should've known better"s and "You're worth nothing"s and "Poor, poor Draco, which feels worse? The pity, the loathing, the apathy, or the foolish false hope?"s. He doesn't cry. He can't. He can barely breathe. He can't move, can't speak, can't do a thing but gasp for breath and emit that ghastly noise, curled naked into a tight ball on his bed.

His magic pulses around him, expands rapid until it fills the room, then contracts itself into a hair-thin line. It pauses, seems to sense its master's loathing, and then poises itself to lash out at the target of Draco's hatred. The teen still doesn't notice; he doesn't notice the way the magic sharpens itself as it slides across his torso and poises itself above the flesh of his right arm, the way it pauses as if making sure it's following its master's wishes. The acute, single-minded quality of Draco's pain hardens its resolve; where the chaos is usually of a sort that incites a desire to destroy everything – the whole world, if possible, and everything in it - it now provokes something far simpler, far easier for his magic to comprehend and carry out: the desire to hurt Draco himself. It's not until it strikes, running its self-created, invisible, sharp edge across the scarred skin of Draco's arm that he notices anything at all outside the destruction within himself.

He hisses, automatically concentrates on his errant power, realizes what exactly has happened, and looses an unbidden bark of laughter (such _smart_ magic, he thinks; clever, clever thing). His magic strikes again, harder and faster than he'd ever dared go when using his wand, and the thrill of it quiets the cacophony for a moment. Red blooms on the pale fabric of his skin, just spots at first, then lengthening and broadening as the blood begins to flow.

His magic strikes again, and again, harder, faster, deeper, working its way from elbow to wrist. Each one brings with it a flash of more intense pain, a wider window of clarity, a further receding of the monster into his chest. It's not until the thousand voices finally go silent that Draco begins to worry. He scrambles for a hold on his magic, faltering as it lashes out at him again, far too intensely and far too near the vital, fragile area of his wrist for his comfort. He gasps at the pain of it, harsh and unrelenting now he's regained his awareness. He fumbles for his wand and shuts his eyes tight when the familiar, slender hawthorne is in his hand. He reaches out desperately, concentrates as hard as he can, counts backwards and uses every trick he'd been taught as a boy just learning how to rein in his power.

His magic seems to resist for a moment, as if convinced of the necessity of its own agenda, then relents and settles back into his core. He holds his breath, almost afraid that his control won't hold, but his power hums gently and docilely, once again completely bending to his will. He exhales heavily as he pushes himself up into a cross-legged position.

His right arm is a mess. Near his elbow are the neat, straight lines he's used to, already turning a muddy brown, the flow long since stopped. The wounds get more jagged, more desperate, as he follows their progress down toward his hand. Just above his wrist, barely a finger's width above the point at which the pale, blue veins peek through, they're crooked; haphazard. Sticky red is smeared where he twitched against the sheets, pooled around the wounds and running in narrow little lines where it couldn't be contained.

Draco is horrified.

He waves his wand frantically, hissing out incantation after incantation in a shocked whisper, hoarse from the beast's roaring. The red syphons away, but the evidence is still there; his skin torn apart, ravaged at an angry, awkward angle, the pink flesh beneath peeking out from its white cover. He tries to knit the skin back together, but the wounds are too jagged and, having never used it on himself, he's not good enough with the spell. He manages to form hideous muddy scabs that hold the wounds together but don't hide their stark forms.

It is not the act of hurting himself that bothers him; it's the fact that his magic, blindly following his desires, has ravaged him so completely. How strong must his hatred be of himself? How completely has he broken the true Draco, that the desire to _hurt_ has turned into the desire to _obliterate_?

For the first time, Draco is afraid of himself. He fears his loathing and his sadness and his temperamental psyche. He has seen how deep his desire runs and it freezes the breath in his lungs. Gone is the usual sense of calm and numbness he usually feels after his skin has yielded and poured his own life out. Instead he feels an all-consuming sense of panic.

_Lucius, _for once, has nothing to say. Even if he did, Draco doubts he could get it out through the peals of laughter echoing in his ears.

The beating of his heart makes his arm throb dully, and the ache only increases as he, in want of something, _anything_ to occupy himself so he doesn't lose control again, gets up and pulls a black cashmere sweater over his head. It burns against the raw, fresh scabs. He pulls a pair of jeans on and buttons them hurriedly. _Lucius_'s laughter is dying down; Draco knows he has to escape the room, distract himself, calm himself down before his bloody father can think of anything to say.

He's never been so terrified of losing control. He wonders if, the next time, he'll be so far gone that he'll come back into himself lying in a bathtub full of hot, thick red, suffocating in the scent of copper, his wrists barely smarting as the water soothes the hurt and the life away.

He lifts the charms on his door and makes his way briskly down the stairs, casting a tempus charm as he goes. It's barely after two in the afternoon. The sitting room will be occupied, he knows, as will the kitchen and dining room. He decides, on a whim, to turn toward the library.

It's a musty, rarely used room, full of narrow bookshelves piled with pureblood literature and texts on potions and dark arts. Any and all lighter material has been relocated to the sitting room by the Order; the library now solely exists for research that everyone hopes won't have to be done: counter curses and antidotes should anyone be stricken by something outside their moral scope.

Draco can't help but wonder if they're prepared to research the dark curses and potions themselves, should the war escalate to a level of necessary atrocity. Somehow, he doesn't think so. Then again, he thinks wryly, does anyone understand the atrocity of this war quite as well as he does?

Potter might, but he stops the train of thought in its tracks before it can go any further. He doesn't want to think about Potter or his green eyes or his grudging acceptance. He doesn't want to think about anything at all, least of all something that makes an emotion that feels dangerously like hope flare in his stomach. Instead, he busies himself waving his wand to light the torches and pull the curtains back from the few small windows. He pulls a random tome from the nearest shelf and settles himself into a seat at a table.

If he closes his eyes, the dusty paper smell can almost convince him that he's back at Hogwarts, safe in the library with nothing more pressing to worry about than a Potions essay he could write in his sleep.

But only for a moment.

He idly flips open his book (a torture-specific Potions text, as it turns out) and sighs at the blessed silence in his head. The monster is dormant, _Lucius_ is quiet; for the first time in hours there's nothing screaming at him.

He feels more than a little pathetic at taking pleasure in something so simple and commonplace.

He has no idea how long he sits there, drowning in a vague, all-encompassing sense of dread and paying half-attention to instructions on how to brew the sensation of flaying with a hot knife or boiling in oil. The light filtering through the windows is turned a ubiquitous shade of murky grey by the layer of filth coating each pane. His arm aches and he feels decidedly _low_. Even without his father's voice in his ear, without _his own_ voice in his ear, the all-over weight of his existence pulls him down until he feels he can barely move with it.

As he reads about a potion that causes the drinker's bones to break one at a time his eyes begin to droop. He feels heavy; so heavy. The sadness and the anger and the confusion are indistinguishable, knitting themselves into pure _weight_. He is unloved and fucked up and trapped...but most of all, he is tired.

He doesn't register the sleep as it comes and, blessedly, he doesn't dream at all.

When he wakes, it's to the sensation of a gentle hand on his shoulder and a cramp in his neck and the dusty pages of a book up against his cheek. He groans softly as he pushes himself up, neck and shoulders protesting, and the hand pulls back. The light through the window is still mostly blocked and he can't tell how long he's been asleep. The ache in his arm is worse, having been tucked against his head, and his mouth tastes like the wrong end of a blast-ended skrewt.

He feels terrible and, pathetically enough, it's an improvement to how he'd felt beforehand. At least now he has the energy to pull his emotions – the heaviness; the toxic mixture of it all – and pull is away from his skin and deep away inside where, at least for a while, he can convince himself that it doesn't exist.

"Alright, Draco?"

His shoulders, sore as they are, still manage to stiffen as the voice of Mrs. Weasley catches him off-guard. She stands just a few feet from him, hands clasped in front of her, a small smile tentatively pulling at her lips.

"It's almost dinnertime. You look so comfortable I almost didn't wake you, but you should eat something."

Draco nods his assent (his thanks, he thinks, only no one would in their right mind would ever presume any gesture from him to be one of gratitude) and stands. Mrs. Weasley's hands tighten, almost imperceptibly.

The motion is so acutely _wrong_ that Draco has to stop himself before he reaches out and pulls them apart. The woman, usually so open and jovial, is never so guarded. The way she stands, as if trying her hardest to seem her usual self but unable to block completely the _something_ that's making her uncomfortable, is _off_. Most people probably wouldn't notice.

But Draco does, and it, inexplicably, sets his teeth on edge.

"Right. Won't be a moment until everyone'll be sitting down, dear. Best get a move on before that son of mine eats it all," she says, standing back and unclasping her hands, gesturing toward the door.

The tone is even worse. It's _fake_. It's wrong. And the way she stands, just far enough back from him to avoid invasion of personal space, urging him ahead so she can stay out of reach – Draco can't help but feel as if he's the cause of it. He's seen things like this before; was _trained_ by his father to spot the lies in people; spot the weakness in them.

To spot intimidation.

He looks at the red-headed woman, short and round around the middle with premature wrinkles and a face that has given far too many smiles and scoldings and suddenly he understands completely.

"I'm sorry," he blurts, eyes wide.

His father would be appalled. Malfoys do not blurt, he knows, but the surprise and the pseudo-fear on Molly Weasley's face seems to wrench the words from him.

"What I said last night was cruel of me, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm just very specific in the way I...I just I shouldn't have said that. I don't think your food is slop-like in any way and I think the way you dote on everyone as if you'd raised them yourself is commendable and I...I think you're a rather marvellous woman, Mrs. Weasley. I'm sorry if for one moment I made you think otherwise."

He squashes the pride that wells up in him, refuses to feel the success of saying something without thinking it through in Malfoy fashion first. He'd felt that sitting across from Harry Potter in the small hours of the morning and it had done nothing but bite him in the ass. He feels no hope, no joy; just a vague sense of resignation.

This is to be the way it is, then, he thinks. Saying what he means half the time and hardening himself to keep the mess inside at bay the other half.

He even thinks he can pull it off (after all, he's gone through worse) until Molly pulls him hard into her chest.

It takes a moment for Draco to realise he's being hugged. The position is awkward, what with him being taller than the woman, and he feels entirely too much breast against his stomach. He can count the amount of times he's been hugged this fiercely on one hand. It feels nearly claustrophobic. He's not used to being so close to someone without the sensation of pain directly on the feels of flesh and warmth. But more than that, it feels...

Motherly.

Mrs. Weasley smells of garlic and cheap lavender soap and something underneath it all that Draco can't name. She feels warm, soft, round...exactly like a mother should feel. Her arms are strong but not painful, her grip firm but gentle.

His own mother's face flashes before his eyes. She'd smelled of vanilla and oranges, felt slender and fragile; her grip had been determined and protective. Despite all the differences, Draco feels, for the first time in months, the embrace of a mother; the _love_ of a mother. He sees Narcissa's face on Molly's, feels gossamer blonde hair against his jaw rather than coarse ginger.

Faceless emotions well within him. In a musty, dingy library, in the middle of a war, in the embrace of a frazzled mother of seven, Draco Malfoy feels forgiven.

Then Mrs. Weasley pulls away and beams at him and says simply, "That's alright, dear. I understand. Now go wash up for dinner." She squeezes his shoulders before she turns away, and looks directly into his eyes.

The spell breaks. As she walks away and closes the door, Draco chastises himself. He feels ridiculous. He is not forgiven. He is not loved. Not by Mrs. Weasley, not by his mother, and certainly not by himself.

Feeling foolish for having felt anything at all, he shelves his book and extinguishes the lamps.

He curses the flicker of warmth the Weasley's matriarch's hug has left in his stomach and resolutely refuses to feel it.

**THIS IS A LINE BREAK**

I was really hoping to get a bit further into his and Harry's relationship in this chapter, but his rampant magic was such a heavy part of the story that I didn't want to bog this chapter down. That plus Sirius and Mrs. Weasley...I guess I had to make sure that this was first and foremost a story about Draco, not just about Drarry.

That being said, with this nightmare finally out of the way and the next chapter coming much more easily to me (and Harry knocking at my skull for some more air time) expect a much speedier update for chapter 5. Next time: Harry and Hermione take the stage.

See you next time!

Oh, and PS: thank you for the lovely reviews. I really appreciate them. You guys are the best!


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